


Four Years Time

by jaxington



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Food, Identity Porn, M/M, Mentions of PTSD, Recovery, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 64,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12228207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaxington/pseuds/jaxington
Summary: Sam didn't expect to have the full college experience, going back to school after years in the Air Force. He's older than everyone else, still figuring out how to be a civilian again, and never really believed in the whole go to college and find yourself thing.Yet somehow, Sam ends up with a group of kooky friends, a major he adores, an addiction to caffeine, and a fling with a beautiful boy, who is sure to break his heart when he goes back to Wakanda at the end of the school year.





	1. Year One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello readers! Welcome to my fic for the Sam Wilson Birthday Bang. 
> 
> It's been my absolute delight to work with the wonderful [wellthisisembarrassing.](https://wellthisisembarrassing.tumblr.com//) Do yourself a favor and check out the stunning art of this story [here.](http://wellthisisembarrassing.tumblr.com/post/165904675255/art-for-jaxington-s-fic-four-years-time-for//) Each piece is seriously beautiful. Big thanks to wellthisisembarrassing for making this whole experience so excellent.
> 
> This was beta read by [waltermittie](http://waltermittie.tumblr.com//) who has the patience of a saint and was doing edits for me last night because I could not get this fic written in a timely fashion to save my life. They also did great stuff for the Sam Birthday Bang, so you should definitely check it out!
> 
> This fic has been my entire life for the last month, as I scrambled to get it written in time (and hoooo boy was it a scramble) so I am beyond thrilled to share it with you now.
> 
> Enjoy.

Sam timed it yesterday, calculating exactly how long it takes to get to Phillips Hall from his apartment, but he still shows up to his first college class so early that the previous class is still in the room, going over their syllabi.

He tries waiting out in the hall, but his legs are jittery and he can’t stand still. The walk to the bathroom doesn’t take nearly long enough, and he washes his hands twice. He does a lap around the floor, crossing his arms over his chest to keep from wringing his hands, and he doesn’t dare wander any further for fear of going too far away and ending up late.

By the time he gets back from his third lap around the floor, the classroom is finally empty. Sam glances around in the hall, trying to keep from looking like he’s got no idea what he’s doing, and wonders if he’s allowed to just go in. Or if it’s still too early. If there’s some sort of college protocol that he missed out on.

This was not covered at orientation.

It’s an embarrassment, is what it is. Sam’s one of a handful of guys in the whole fucking world who can fly with wings strapped to his back. He carried out over seventy successful rescue missions in his career, many under heavy fire. He survived losing his best friend and shattering his knee and an exhausting year of extensive therapy - physical and otherwise - and there is no way he’s going to let something as common as college get to him.

He spends another three minutes dilly dallying in the hall like an asshole before he takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and pushes through the classroom door.

It’s a decent sized room. Nothing like the enormous lecture hall where he’ll have his intro bio class this afternoon (he scoped that out yesterday too, on his timed walking tour to all his classes) but there’s enough seats that Sam’s confident he’ll be able to blend into the crowd without getting lost in it. The classroom is curved, with three tiers of seats forming a half circle around the raised dais with a lectern in the middle that backs up to a whiteboard. There are big windows in the back, flooding the whole space with bright, mid-morning light.

Sam startles a little when he realizes that he’s not actually the first one here. A scruffy looking white guy sitting at the end second tier, apparently deep asleep with his head on his desk, somehow managed to beat him to it.

Sam takes the seat nearly opposite him, on the other side of the curve, and glances around.

Sitting in the nearly empty classroom and it just sort of hits him all at once; this is college.

It’s like something out of a teen movie, with the desks and the whiteboards and kids with backpacks chattering in the hallway, and it’s finally becoming real for Sam. Walking around GW’s campus, his acceptance letter, and his GI Bill coming through did nothing to make Sam feel like it was really happening. But he sits nearly alone in this classroom - still way too early - and he gets it.

Sam’s in college. This is why his mama’s so proud.

More people trickle in, everyone quiet until the room fills up and the kids start chatting with the people in desks near them. It’s the already familiar freshmen questions that Sam heard plenty of at orientation -  _ where are you from, what’s your major, what dorm are you in  _ \- but no one asks Sam anything. He didn’t expect them too. He is far from your average college kid.

The guy that managed to beat Sam into the classroom raises his head to glare at the trio of kids sitting near him, shrieking with laughter at an unreasonable pitch for this early in the morning.

Now that Sam’s getting a good look at the guy, he sees that the dude is old. In a sea of chubby cheeked, bushy tailed, eager as hell youths - and fuck, did Sam really look that young when he enlisted at eighteen? - is this gruff motherfucker. Hunched down in his seat and scowling, he looks like he’s Sam’s age, well into his twenties and a fully grown man, unlike the grangly kids roaming around campus. This guy might be even older. It’s difficult to tell exactly what’s going on under the mop of brown hair, the five o’clock shadow, and the bad attitude.

Sam’s sees something familiar in his eyes, though. They’re kinda haunted and kinda paranoid, permanently a little freaked out, wide and blue. They’re shell shocked soldier eyes.

Sam’s seen eyes like that often enough, looking back at him in a mirror, even a year after his discharge, especially on nights when he wakes up dreaming of Riley and only starts to feel like he’s no longer in a damn desert after he splashes cool water on his face. Sam sees them on other soldiers at the VA, during group or wandering around waiting for an appointment.

If Sam hadn’t already had this dude pegged as a vet based on his age and his eyes, the fancy prosthetic would seal the deal. It takes Sam almost too long to notice it, even with this guy brandishing it like a weapon, showing it off with a tank top instead of covering up with a long sleeve shirt like Sam’s come to expect from a lot of the guys missing limbs who are regulars at the VA.

It’s like the guy’s using his arm to get the infants they’re attending classes with to keep away. Between that and the scowl, it does an effective job. There’s no one sitting in the radius of seats around him, and Sam’s jealous. 

Sam might be old, but apparently he isn’t scary because there are a couple of frat bro types sitting next to him, bragging about all the girls they’ve fucked since moving into their dorms a week ago.

In a different life - before Riley was blown out of the sky while Sam watched - Sam would’ve gotten up and taken one of those seats next to Fancy Metal Arm, introduced himself, and made a joke about the old guys sticking together surrounded by all these damn kids.

Sam had been accepted at GW on his first round applying to college at age eighteen, when he was top of the senior class at his high school. If he’d enrolled then instead of enlisting, he’d probably have already made ten new friends before his first class started. That was the kind of loquacious overachiever he was back then.

Now he huddles lower in his seat and pulls a notebook out of his backpack just to give his shaking hands something to do.

The kids all around him have laptops.

Across the room, Fancy Metal Arm catches Sam’s eye as he pulls a notebook of his own out of a backpack. He blinks, studying Sam intently for a minute before lifting his chin in a jerky nod of acknowledgement.

Sam gives him a nod back, and he imagines walking over there and saying hello and asking if twenty-six is supposed to feel this goddamn ancient. Maybe Fancy Metal Arm is imagining what he would’ve done in this situation before he went through whatever he went through to get that prosthetic. Maybe he is imagining making that walk himself.

Instead he just the nods at Sam and Sam nods back, a silent,  _ hey, you’re old and I’m old and how about these damn kids, huh? _

Then the professor comes in and starts passing out the syllabus, and Sam focuses on  _ Intro to Global History: Revolts Against British Colonialism, _ instead of some random old guy in his class.

* * *

 

Homework is a relief.

After months of rehab on his knee and therapy for his PTSD and soul searching to figuring out just what the hell he wants to do with his life post-pararescue, it’s a joy to have some purpose outside just getting himself  _ okay _ again. He reads a couple hundred pages of dense historical journals a week and he doesn’t think about Riley for whole minutes at a time and it’s  _ good _ .

(Of course, when he’s done reading he feels immediately guilty for not thinking about Riley for whole minutes at a time, and then gets angry for feeling guilty because he knows it wasn’t his fault. He knows he deserves a life. And then he thinks about how Riley deserves a life too, but he won’t get it because he’s fucking dead, and then he’s back to the guilt. 

It’s a stupid fucking cycle, but he’s working on it.)

And after the reading is done, there’s always a paper to write or more reading to do or some research to get a head start on. He makes careful note cards to help him memorize a metric fuck ton of works for his art history class. He tries to give a shit about his basic math requirement, like this level of geometry isn’t laughably easy after all the angles and curves he calculated on the fly - sometimes while literally flying - as pararescue. He throws himself wholeheartedly into his  _ Revolts _ class and decides to major in history, much to his mother’s delight.

Sam lives in the library, finding a couple spots in Gelmen for studying, one deep in the bowels of the stacks for when he wants silence and another near the computers when he needs the ambient noise of students laughing and chatting and bumbling their way through group projects.

In his shitty apartment he makes dinner for one when he’s got the energy for it - steadily working his way through his ma’s recipes, the ones she wrote out on note cards to take with him when he got into GW - and he does not make any friends or really talk to anyone outside the group of regulars he sees at the VA for group twice a week. 

But that’s okay because college is good. Homework is good. Slowly but surely, he’s relearning how to have purpose as a civilian.

Once or twice a month, he gets on a bus for Charlottesville to go stay at his ma’s place. He brings his laundry like any good college kid in a blue mesh bag, but Ma laughs when she sees it slung over his shoulder and tells him do his laundry himself, like that wasn’t his plan all along. The laundry room in his building costs an obscene amount of money on each load. A dollar-fifty to wash and a dollar-fifty to dry, then usually another dollar because the first go around never seems to get everything actually dry. Doing the wash at her place is much better. Since Ma got tenure at UVA, she’s started splurging on the nice detergent.

Darlene Wilson moved to Charlottesville only a year after Sam joined the Air Force. Despite the extended family and her best friends all living within the same eight block radius in Harlem, Ma said it didn’t feel like home with Sam on base across the country and Sarah living with her new husband, David, in Virginia. She left her long time job at City College, left the only home Sam ever had, the place they all lived together before his dad died, bought a house down the block from Sarah and a ten minute walk to campus. She even brought her damn boyfriend with her and when she told Sam about it, a solid month after making the move, she did so in a damn letter. 

Eight years later and he’s mostly adjusted. Mostly.

Malcolm’s a decent guy. They got married while Sam was in Afghanistan, just the two of them at the courthouse with strangers as witnesses, and Sam’s mostly adjusted to that, too. 

Malcolm’s a kindergarten teacher and never tried to be Sam’s father when he started taking Sam’s ma out to nice dinners and walks in the park during Sam’s senior year of high school. And sure, maybe eighteen-year-old Sam was so freaked out by his mother moving on with someone a mere nine years after his father died - and so enraptured by the recruiter whispering in his ear - that his tentative fantasy of following his father into the Air Force instead of going to college became a full on plan, but none of that was Malcolm’s fault. 

Now he’s just glad that his ma found someone to love her the way she deserves.

Last summer, at an ice cream social for the elementary school, one of Malcolm’s students even told Sam that he looked just like Malcolm and Sam just smiled and nodded instead of yelling, “ _ he’s not my fucking father _ ” at a five year old.

Sam might still get cranky over the fact that his ma has a new home now, in a new city with a new husband, but he still only applied to colleges within driving distance when he finally decided he wanted to go back to school.

After his last midterm before Thanksgiving Break, Sam gets on a bus with a blue mesh bag full of laundry and his backpack stuffed with all the books he’ll need to study over break. Ma picks him up at the bus stop, trying to carry the laundry for him and then rolling her eyes when he won’t let it go. Once he gets everything stowed in the trunk, she takes his face in both her hands and tugs him down to kiss both his cheeks, just like she did when he flew home to her with a shattered knee and a broken heart and a haunted head. When she smiles at him this time, she doesn’t cry.

“Get in the car,” she says. “Malcolm’s making burgers.”

* * *

 

It’s nice enough to sit outside on the back deck. And it ain’t Harlem, but Sam begrudgingly admits that having a big back yard is nice, the fall colors out in full force and enough leaves left on the big trees to make it shady on an unseasonably hot afternoon.

He and Ma read outside for a solid hour, enjoying the quiet, before Sarah and her girls arrive. Sam can hear them shrieking and giggling in the driveway before they burst through the side gate, a whirlwind of energy, everyone talking all at once.

The girls make a beeline for the back shed, emerging a second later with gloves and a ball. Sarah stands behind Sam on the deck, squeezes his shoulder, and yells, “Come say hello to your grandma! And your uncle!”

Jamie looks to the sky and groans, like her life is very hard and her mother is very unreasonable, but Jody is a total charmer at five and she zips right over, flinging herself into her grandma’s lap.

“Hi!” she squeals before giving a rapid-fire summary of her day, from what she ate for breakfast to what happened at school and this thing that a mean boy said to her friend. Sam maybe gets every third word, but his ma nods along, listening intently.

Jody turns to him next. She gets shy, shuffling her feet and swinging her hands behind her back. She bites her lip and Sam sees she’s missing both front teeth. That’s new since the last time he was here.

“Hi, Uncle Sam,” she says.

“Hi,” he replies.

She runs off after that, going to retrieve her glove from where she dumped it in the grass. Sam doesn’t blame her for getting shy around him. They barely know each other. 

Sam was away for most of the girls’ lives and when he was here last year, he was hardly fit for company. As much as he wants to be  _ Uncle Sam _ to them instead of just some random dude their mother makes them say hi to, he has no idea how to do that yet. He doesn’t know what to say to them. He barely knows what to say to his own mother and is just now getting comfortable speaking up in his  _ Revolts _ class. And Sarah would be all for her girls learning about the Mau Mau Rebellion against British rule in Kenya, she probably doesn’t want Sam getting into the gorey details.

Jamie shuffles over, says hi, tells them how desperately she needs to practice catching pop flies, and then jogs back out to the grass, where Jody is trying to heave a softball as high in the air as she can with her tiny little arms to accommodate said pop fly practice.

Someday, when Sam trusts himself with them a little more and his knee hurts a little less, he’s going to get in on that pop fly practice.

“I swear I spend my whole life in the car.” Sarah groans and collapses into the chair across from Sam, closing her eyes and leaning back. “Were we into so many things when we were kids? Jamie is all baseball, baseball, baseball, and Jody’s been bouncing around between art classes, piano lessons, and ballet. None of these things are anywhere near each other. All I do is zigzag my ass around this damn city.”

“They’re bright little girls with a lot of interests,” Ma says, pouring Sarah a glass of wine from the bottle sitting on the table. “It’s your job to encourage that.”

Sarah groans some more and takes a huge gulp her drink. “You didn’t even own a car when we were kids. You’d just stick us on the subway and call it a day.”

Ma scoffs. “Jody is five. You think I was sticking you on the subway alone at five?”

“Yeah,” Sam says and both his mother and his sister turn to look at him like they are surprised to hear him willingly put his two cents in a conversation without being prompted with a thousand direct questions. Sam’s a little surprised, too. Speaking in class has been good for him. “You were at least twelve, Sarah. Carting around five year old me.”

“See?” says Ma. “No five year olds alone on the subway. You should’ve spaced out the girls a little better. Waited to have your second until your first was old enough to help out more. I wouldn’t put a seven year old on the subway alone either.”

“Jamie is actually seven and a half,” Sam says, using the same prim, put out tone Jamie does when she corrects all the adults in her life who dare to say she is only seven.

Ma and Sarah laugh harder than they should. Sam thinks it’s half out of relief. They are so damn delighted to see that Sam’s starting to get back something like a personality again.

Malcolm comes out with a plate full of burgers and David shows up, still in his work clothes. He kisses Sarah and then joins the elaborate game of catch the girls are playing. With so many voices, Sam gets quiet but it’s still nice. After so long away, Sam is finally starting to feel like part of this family again.

Settled around the table for dinner, Sarah and David trying to wrangle their girls into eating something with vitamins, Ma leans close to Sam and asks, “Have you made any friends?”

And Sam chokes a little on his burger and can’t exactly say, _ no I can’t talk to any of the infants in my classes without feeling like I’m a million years old. _ So instead he says, “Yeah, one. This vet. We’re the only old guys in that Revolts class.”

“Really?” Ma beams at him. 

Sam’s such a fucking loser, that a dumb joke and a half lie about a friend are enough to have his Ma looking as proud as she did when he graduated valedictorian with a full ride to anywhere.

(She definitely did not look like that after she announced that he’s enlisted instead.)

“Really,” Sam mutters. He and Fancy Metal Arm have been sitting together for the last month, since the guy was absent for two classes in a row, and introduced actual words into their relationship previously defined by head nods, asking to borrow Sam’s notes from the lectures he missed.

Sam gets the feeling that sitting next to each other three mornings a week is as close as Fancy Metal Arm gets to making friends at GW, too.

“What’s his name?” Ma asks.

Sam grimaces. “You know, I never actually caught it. But we talk before and after class.”

Ma sighs, but doesn’t look terribly disappointed. She’s been so patient through his recovery, even when he was living here with her, so angry he couldn’t speak one second and then so fucking sad he couldn’t get out of bed the next. 

Once, when he’d only been home a handful of weeks, he’d yelled at her for putting the wrong kind of mustard on a sandwich she’d made him. Of course he wasn’t angry about fucking mustard or even angry at her. He was just miserable and hurting and furious at the universe. He kept expecting her to say, “ _ I told you so. It wouldn’t be like this if you’d gone to college like you were supposed to _ .” He was feeling way too much and he had no idea where to put it all, until it just came pouring out at her, over mustard of all things.

He would’ve totally understood if she yelled right back or kicked him out for speaking to her like that in her own home because he was horrible. He was  _ awful _ . He couldn’t even stand to be around himself, and saw no reason why anyone else would want to be anywhere near him, either.

Instead Ma just looked at him, calm as anything, and said, “You can make your own lunch in that case.” Then she took an absolutely massive bite out of the sandwich, and said, “Mmmm spicy mustard,” with her mouth stuffed full, a shred of lettuce landing on the collar of her shirt. The sight was so strange and so absurd that Sam laughed harder than he’d laughed in years. 

Of course, that laughing turned to sobbing pretty quick and he ended up with his head in her lap, weeping like a baby as she murmured soothing words and ran her thumb along his hairline. 

That night, he’d cooked her dinner for the first time. And he started going to therapy regularly a few days later.

Now she smiles at him like chatting with a stranger before one of his classes is an accomplishment, pats his arm, and says, “Eat your burger.”

* * *

 

Sam’s knee is fucked. The blast that got Riley sent shrapnel his way, and his right knee took the brunt of it. His rough landing - knee first, something he doesn’t even remember, he doesn’t remember much after Riley fell - did not help matters.

He’s able to run a couple miles a week now, his preferred path taking him around the Jefferson Memorial. He likes the water even if he does not like the memorial - because fuck Thomas Jefferson - but his route around The Mall and past the monument is pretty.

Saturday mornings are the best. There are less people willing to get up this early on a weekend but it's not like Sam’s been able to break the military habit of waking at 0500 every damn morning.

It’s nice. It’s meditative. It’s slow going with his knee and it’s a little harder now that the cold weather has his joints stiff, but Sam likes the jog most mornings. He lets his brain coast for awhile, listening to his sneakers on the concrete path. His gait sounds different than it used to, the slight limp from his right knee barely noticeable when he walks is a little more pronounced when he runs.

Overall, its his happy place.

Until some asshole starts intruding on his peace.

It’s this scrawny blond slip of a white dude, all lanky limbs and awkward elbows even under the layers of his running gear. The dude hauls ass, lapping Sam with a perfectly pleasant, “On your left.”  

Sam glowers and watches him speed off after being lapped twice on the first Saturday. And Sam could handle that except then it happens a second Saturday, and then a third.

At this point, the little shit definitely recognizes him, a laugh in his voice when he says, “On your left.”

On the fourth Saturday, Sam pushes himself too hard and he never manages to catch up, but when the guy only passes him once it feels like progress, even if Sam’s got to collapse in the grass near the Air and Space Museum to catch his breath and rub at his knee at the end of his run.

Sam’s got his eyes closed, trying not to die and wondering if the five minute miles he ran once upon a time were just something he dreamed up, when someone clears their throat in Sam’s general vicinity.

Before Sam even manages to crack his eyes open, he’s got a pretty good idea who’s trying to get his attention and it's not a surprise at all when he sees the skinny blond speed demon, standing there on the sidewalk with hands on his hips, shuffling his feet and looking guilty. 

Like a true asshole, he hasn’t even broken a sweat.

“Can I help you?” Sam asks, pleased that he doesn’t sound as out of breath as he feels. His heartbeat pulsing in his knee, a dull throb that will probably be a full blown ache by tonight. He should take a cab back to his apartment instead of walking.

“Uh,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Are you okay?”

“Peachy,” Sam replies, rolling his eyes. 

“Do you need a medic?”

Sam laughs, begrudgingly impressed. This little dude is fast, and with a big attitude. “I need a new set of lungs.”

The guy grins, his smile all lopsided and wonky. He nods at the insignia on Sam’s sweatshirt. “What unit you with?”

“58th pararescue.” Sam’s progress has felt so painfully slow, but his heart doesn’t even hurt when he says it this time, not like it would’ve even six months ago. “Now I’m a student. Sam.” He introduces himself and sticks a hand out for the little dude to shake.

“Steve,” he says, shaking Sam’s hand and then pulling him up to his feet. Steve might be tiny, but he’s got a ridiculous set of legs and enough hidden strength to get Sam up.

Completely forgetting how he’s pushed his knee to its absolute limit for the day, Sam puts his full weight on it as he stands and winces, nearly toppling over in his shock.

“Whoa, whoa,” Steve says, catching his elbow. “I was kidding about the medic. You okay?”

“War wound,” Sam says and that’s easy to say now, too. “Did a little too much for this old knee today.”

Steve grimaces. “Wow, I feel like a real jerk for all that on your left stuff. Sorry I pushed you to keep up.”

“Not your fault, I’m too competitive for my own good.”

“Yeah, but I run actual marathons, you know? I don’t need to rub it in.”

“No shit?” Sam says. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to keep up with Steve, even in his prime.

“Really, I was a jerk,” Steve says. And it’s hard to believe that the same cocky little shit who said on your left a billion times is now standing here looking so wide eyed and guilty. “I’m headed to this diner, just down the street. Can I buy you a coffee?”

Sam blinks at him, trying to figure out if this is supposed to be a date. 

It’s been years since Sam went on a date, and that was never with a dude. Growing up, he dated girls and messed around with boys on the down low, mostly because two guys walking down the street holding hands in his neighborhood was just not going to happen. 

And that trend continued when he enlisted for obvious don’t ask don’t tell reasons. And then there was his painful crush on Riley. And then Riley died. And Sam kinda didn’t feel like a person for awhile there. And he just hasn’t given dating much thought since.

Steve seems like a good guy. Sam’s certainly been able to talk to him with more ease than he’s managed to do anything in the last year, but the idea of saying yes and going on a date is a lot.

Just imagining it is making his palms sweat. Sam swallows down the lump in his throat.

All this must be pretty clearly written on his face, because Steve’s eyes go wide and he takes a big step back from Sam. 

“No! I mean, yeah, I will totally buy you sorry-for-being-a-jerk coffee, but I’m, uh, actually meeting my husband?” He lifts his left hand and wiggles the finger with a thin silver band. “Right now, at the diner? So. This is a strictly platonic coffee. If you’re interested. If not, I’ll just try not to be such an ass when I lap you next time.”

Sam scoffs. “Who says there’s gonna be a next time? Maybe it’ll be me lapping you.”

Steve actually rolls his eyes at that. “The diner’s real close. Maybe after breakfast your knee will be a little better? If you rest it?”

Sam goes with him.

Steve asks what Sam’s studying (history) and Sam asks what Steve does for a living (exhibit design with the Smithsonian). They’ve both been in DC since last summer. They’re both from and prefer New York (Harlem and Brooklyn, respectively) but agree that all the free museums in DC are awesome. Sam asks Steve about the whole marathon thing (Steve runs them for fun because he’s a superhuman or something. He got really into cross country in high school, after he outgrew his childhood asthma but was still too scrawny to attempt a contact sport.) 

Sam is pretty damn impressed with his newfound ability to hold a conversation like a normal person. His mother will definitely be hearing about this when he calls her later.

The small talk gets them all the way to the diner. Steve waves at the nearest waitress like he knows her and then turns right without waiting to be seated. He heads towards a booth in the corner, where a grumpy looking white dude with a mop of brown hair is reading a book and drinking coffee. He’s got a fancy metal arm.

Sam thinks he’s seeing things - it’s happened before - and he blinks rapidly, but the image before him remains the same. He’s still looking at the only other old guy in his history class and Steve’s still headed right towards him.

Sam takes a moment to grin ruefully and shake his head before following.

Steve slides in to the booth, and Fancy Metal Arm doesn’t look up from his book but he does lean close to his husband, tilting his cheek towards Steve just as Steve moves to kiss him.

“Hey, babe,” Steve says. “We’ve got company. Remember that guy I was telling you about who jogs on Saturday mornings? Well, I owe him a coffee.”

Steve’s husband looks up from his book, scowl already in place, but his eyes go wide when he sees Sam standing by the booth, arms crossed over his chest and grinning. He lets out a startled laugh and says, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Hey, Fancy Metal Arm,” Sam says in greeting.

“Cheekbones,” Bucky replies, nodding.

Sam laughs, glad that  _ Cheekbones _ is as at least as ridiculous a nickname to give someone as  _ Fancy Metal Arm. _ He takes a seat on the other side of the booth as Steve looks back and forth between them.

“Wait, isn’t Cheekbones what you call that guy in your history class who you refuse to introduce yourself to?” Steve asks.

Sam does some more laughing - which has got to be a record amount of laughing all at once since he got home - and reaches out across the table. “My friends call me Sam.”

Fancy Metal Arm shakes Sam’s hand with his non fancy metal arm. “Bucky Barnes,” he says.

Steve huffs. “Now was that so hard?”

“I want pancakes,” Sam decides.


	2. Year Two

“You do all the cooking? All of it? Three meals a day?” America shouts to be heard over the din of the bar. It’s Halloween and she’s dressed as Wonder Woman, her curly hair held back off her forehead with a golden metal hair band, and the whole ensemble is really emphasizing the deeply unimpressed look she is giving him now.

She raises an eyebrow and sips her third beer of the night. Freshly twenty-one, she’s not yet over the novelty of ordering booze in a bar with a real ID. When Sam bought the second round, America insisted that he give her the cash so she could do the ordering herself.

Sam met America at the beginning of the semester at a Queer People of Color meeting, after he and Bucky made a summertime pact to get more involved in campus life as part of their respective recovery efforts, agreeing to each join a club, group, or other extracurricular by the end of the first week back.

Bucky joined the innertube water polo team for reasons that defy understanding.

QPOC is pretty in line with Sam’s current interests. Unlike Bucky, who married his childhood sweetheart the second it was legal in New York, Sam never had the time, space, or inclination to really dig into the whole bisexual thing when he was serving. But it’s different now. He’s got a year of college under his belt - two years of civilian life total - and college is all about self discovery, or so he’s told.

It’s been good so far. They meet once a week, sometimes to discuss a predetermined topic, sometimes to listen to a guest lecturer, sometimes to organize fundraisers or protests. He gets a lot out of the meetings and volunteering, but avoids most of the social events because he’s never going to be comfortable being best friends with a bunch of college kids so much younger than him, and all the underage drinking that usually involves.

America is the one exception, mostly because she lives in the same apartment complex where Sam, Steve, and Bucky got a place together in August. The three of them gave up two piece of shit one-bedroom apartments for a slightly less piece of shit two-bedroom closer to campus. Two weeks after Sam attended his first QPOC meeting, they ran into America in the mailroom and Steve invited her to dinner.

She gets invited to dinner at least once a week now and is apparently deeply unimpressed that Sam is always the one toiling away in the kitchen.

“Look, I like cooking alright?” Sam says. He skips the part where he got really into it right after he came home and making food seemed like the one thing in the whole world he had any control over. He could make his family happy through food at a time when he couldn’t really talk to them, couldn’t really look at them. “It’s soothing. And it’s not like I’m working extra hard to serve them meals to earn my keep. I do the cooking. Steve does all the grocery shopping which is fine by me because I fucking hate grocery shopping. And Bucky does the dishes.”

“All the dishes?” America asks, going from deeply unimpressed to obviously jealous of Sam’s current living situation. “I  _ hate _ the dishes.”

“It’s not just the dishes,” Sam says. “He cleans the whole place like every other day. It’s almost too clean.”

America laughs and shakes her head. “There’s no such thing as too clean, Sam, come on.”

“No really!” Sam insists. “Sometimes I’ll have a glass of water out and I’ll go to the bathroom and when I get back, the thing has already been dumped, scrubbed, and is chilling on the drying rack, but Barnes is nowhere to be seen. It’s like living with some sort of overly tidy ghost.”

America laughs even harder and Sam feels a little bad because Sam got super into cooking when he came home while Bucky got super into cleaning and it’s not really that funny.

Okay, the cup thing might be a little funny. Barnes is just lucky he’s never dumped the expensive pomegranate juice Sam buys to treat himself right before big exams.

“You  _ are _ a really good cook,” America says.

Sam raises his glass to her and tips his head. “Thank you. I guess your dinner invitation stands, then.”

“Hey!” Steve pushes through the crowd and loudly announces his arrival, decked out in a Superman costume, complete with overly defined plush biceps and fake rippling abs. 

America squeals when she sees him - apparently digging all the fake muscles - and hugs him.

“Did you two coordinate this?” Sam asks, gesturing between their blue and red comic book outfits.

“Nope,” says America.

“We definitely should next year,” Steve says. “Buck never wants to be a superhero with me.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, surveying Bucky where he’s loitering silently behind Steve. “What are you supposed to be? Did you dress up at all?”

“I’m a dude in distress,” Bucky says, completely straight faced and with no inflection.

Sam snorts. “Well, no shit.”

“A what?” asks America.

Steve sighs. “He says it's the guy version of a damsel in distress. This is what I get when I ask to do a couple costume.”

“Yeah, you get a zero for effort, Barnes,” Sam says. “Those are your regular ass clothes.”

Bucky shrugs, kisses the top of Steve’s head, and says, “First round’s on me.”

* * *

 

Sam thought Halloween was for kids, all candy and trick or treating, but apparently it’s a cornerstone of the college experience. Any excuse for drinking multiple nights in a row.

Sam is just doing this one night, and only because Steve’s enthusiasm for dressing up is contagious and America agreed to go to a low key gay bar instead of a dance club, far from campus and with a slightly older crowd.

His ma was definitely more excited about the whole thing than Sam was, and even offered to sew him a brand new costume like she used to when he was a kid. She pouted a little when he just grabbed his old falcon getup he wore for a video project he did in high school on birds. It’s just a sweatshirt with a series of felt feathers sewn under the arms and to the bottom at his back to act like a tail. He did let her add a few more feathers but absolutely drew the line when she tried to get him to wear the plastic beak over his nose.

It’s hard to imagine that a year ago his life was telling his mom he had a friend despite his unwillingness to even introduce himself to Bucky, going home to a shitty apartment to do homework, and talking to pretty much nobody but his professors, the guys in group, and his family. 

Now he’s seated around a table at a gay bar, smushed between Wonder Woman and Superman, across from a guy with a shit-you-not actual robot arm, and the whole thing is pretty weird, but also great. 

He’s loves what he’s studying. He got an A on a paper from a notoriously hard professor. His nightmares are rare things now and when he does have them, he’s living with two guys who get it. Steve always makes his over steeped tea on those mornings after a nightmare and it tastes terrible but the gesture is nice, and sometimes Bucky will come sit with him in the living room in the middle of the night when getting back to sleep just isn’t going to happen. He’s a two and a half hour bus ride from his family and he can cook almost ( _ almost _ ) as good as his mama.

It’s good. Sam’s happy.

The drinks, the company, and his general contentment with life these days even has Sam feeling proud of his stupid falcon costume, even if the thing is a little loose on him now. He was ripped in high school, spent half of his life in the weight room, but he’s lost most of his muscle mass since he came home. Tonight he’s not even self conscious about it. 

(Earlier, alone in his room, he spread his arms out parallel with the floor and looked in the mirror, imagining metal instead of felt. He missed his wings so bad he ached.)

Later in the night they’re joined by Natasha, Bucky’s graduate student friend who TAs for his anatomy class. Sam always thought she was something of a terrifying ice queen, but she wins the award for the dorkiest costume in the group, showing up as Rosalind Franklin and giving them all a giggly, drunken - although apparently in character - speech on DNA sequencing.

“I should do this professionally,” Natasha says as she sits down and Sam doesn’t know if she means studying DNA (which she is already doing) or going into full time historical impersonation (which she is great at) but he decides it’s as good a time as any for a bathroom break.

There’s a line for the two single stall, gender neutral bathrooms and Sam stands in it, leaning with his side against the wall and grinning to himself just remembering Natasha’s little performance. Now that he’s standing, all the beer is hitting him.

There’s a Black guy standing next to him in line. He’s leaning back against the wall, reading a book, of all things. The lighting is dim in the hallway, and he’s got to hold it close to his face to squint at the words. The title appears to be in French, so it could be about anything. The guy seems to have put very little effort into his costume, a pair of dollar store cat ears stuck crookedly into his short hair. A pink nose and white whiskers stand out on his deep brown skin.

He looks vaguely familiar, but Sam can’t place him. He decides to just ask if they’ve met or to maybe say hello since they are collectively 2/3rds of the Black men Sam’s seen in this bar so far tonight, but that beer must be more potent than he realized because instead he just blurs out, “So you like cats.”

The guy’s eyes swing up from the page of his book to stare at Sam, but otherwise he stays perfectly still. He looks Sam up and down, raises one curved eyebrow, and purses his lips.

Given the title of his book is in French, Sam’s not completely sure he even speaks English.

“Uh,” says Sam, when it becomes clear that the guy expects some sort of follow up to this declaration.

But then a door to the bathroom opens and the cat man is next up. He smiles a little, shakes his head as he pushes off the wall and walks into the bathroom, giving Sam a final look over his shoulder as he closes the bathroom door behind him.

Sam groans and hides his face in his hands, feeling completely ridiculous. Speaking to new people - especially outside the now familiar classroom environment - is still hard for him, and he botched that pretty good. He’s grateful that the other bathroom opens up a second later and Sam can take a minute to get over his shame in private.

He shouldn’t be surprised to see that cat man is one of three new people squished around the table when he comes back from the bathroom. It’s like walking into that diner with Steve to find Fancy Metal Arm waiting for them all over again.

It’s a trio of the most gorgeous people Sam’s ever seen. Next to the guy are two women, with similar shades dark brown skin and high cheekbones. One is scowling, her hair buzzed shorter than Sam’s, her line up sharp, and she looks like the only thing she finds remotely acceptable about the bar is the woman next to her. She’s not wearing a costume, unless the thick gold necklaces wrapped around her neck and black dress are in reference to something Sam’s never heard of, and when the woman next to her drops an arm around her shoulders, she relaxes, her face going soft.

The other woman is talking with Natasha, using her free hand to gesture wildly. She’s got a wide smile and perfect teeth. Her dreadlocks are long and even, held back with a piece of cloth wrapped around the crown of her head. There is a fake gash across her cheek, the blood there the wrong color and the wrong texture. 

(For a moment, Sam can only stare at it and see all the real wounds he’s encountered - friends sliced up and his own knee shredded - but he can shake it off and focus back on the table.)

Then of course there is cat guy, smiling slightly and looking down at his lap. Sam’s pretty damn sure he’s reading his book beneath the table.

Sam resolves to say something less dumb to him at some point in the evening. It’s important to have goals.

“So.” Steve’s talking as Sam gets to the table, turned toward the trio of new people and leaning back into Bucky’s chest. “You guys are from Wakanda. Do you have places like this there? Gay bars, I mean? I know Africa can be a little…  _ rough _ .”

“Naw,” says Sam, scoffing. Everyone at the table turns to stare at him, surprised by his sudden reappearance and his quick reply. “Not Wakanda. The anti LGBT stuff you see coming out of African countries is, like, a direct legacy of colonialism. All those Christian ministries running around and Europe imposing their homophobia and general devotion to the gender binary all over the place. So they put all those laws in place during colonialism but Wakanda was never colonized, so. You know. Gay bars.”

Sam might talk more now than he did a year ago, but ranting like that is really more Steve’s thing. Again, he blames the beer, and when he stops talking he realizes that three actual Wakandans are blinking at him with various degrees of shock and bemusement.

“Eh,” says Sam, rubbing the back of his neck. “But if you guys are from there you would probably have a better answer than some American dude who’s taken one and a half African history classes. I’ll shut up now.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Cat Man, smirking. “I think you did rather well.”

“That’s how I know you!” Sam snaps his fingers and points at the guy, recognizing his voice, those steady, low tones and elegant accent. “You’re in my Central African history class with Wheatley. You’re the one who always argues with her.”

That damn smirk stretches into a full on grin and Sam leans against the back of Bucky’s chair, his legs suddenly shaky beneath him.

The guy shrugs one shoulder, everything about him smooth and controlled, from his posture to his grin to the coy look he’s giving Sam from beneath long eyelashes. For a few heady seconds he just holds Sam gaze and then he says, “Only when I find her lectures  _ lacking _ .”

Sam laughs.

“Sam,” says Natasha, breaking the moment. The noises from the bar rush back into Sam’s ears. He remembers that he’s in a room full of people, gathered around a table with his friends, and not just having a moment with the disembodied voice from the back of his history class that sometimes pipes up to correct something about the lecture.

“This is my friend Okoye,” Natasha continues, bumping her shoulder into the woman with the locs before she goes on down the line with her introductions. “We work together at the gym. And her girlfriend Ayo. And their friend Challa.”

_ Challa _ . Sam nods at Okoye and Ayo but his gaze lingers on  _ Challa _ .

“Everyone,” Natasha says, gesturing with her drink. Some sloshes over the edge of her glass and almost gets America. “That’s Sam. He lives with Steve and Bucky.”

“Hey,” he says to the three of them. And then to Okoye, nodding at her outfit. “Michonne? From The Walking Dead?”

“Yes!” she says, beaming at him. “Ayo made me leave my sword at home, as to not scare the Americans, but it’s still a good costume is it not?”

“The best,” Sam agrees.

Eventually, someone wrangles up another chair, everyone shuffling around to make room, and if Sam goes out of his way to make sure he ends up squished in between America and Challa the Cat Lover, well, no one’s mentioning it.

“So,” says Challa, low and in Sam’s ear while the rest of the table is distracted by Natasha and America loudly pondering what a meeting between Rosalind Franklin and Wonder Woman might look like. “You like birds.”

Sam grins into his beer, feels his cheeks heat, and says, “Yeah. They can fly.”

* * *

 

“Is this seat taken?”

Sam glances up from his notebook where he’s been color coding the notes from his geology class this morning to see Challa standing by the empty desk to Sam’s right. 

It’s been almost a week since Halloween, and Sam looked for Challa when he got into Wheatley's Tuesday afternoon class. He tried not to pout about it when Challa was nowhere to be found, but it’s Thursday now, and here he is, standing tall and wearing an all black outfit, nearly identical to the one he had on at the bar, just missing the cat ears and whiskers.

He’s got excellent posture, back straight, chin held high, and there is nothing about the way he’s standing that indicates any discomfort, but his expression is a little closed off, like he’s actually expecting Sam to tell him to sit somewhere else.

“It’s all you, man,” Sam says, nodding at the desk. He always prefers the front row for smaller lecture classes - keeps him focused, helps him participate - but he’s in the minority on that one so the seats next to him are always free. Challa usually sits in the back, and he looks wary as he lowers himself into the desk next to Sam’s. 

He’s still sitting with his shoulders back, perfectly straight, and Sam feels like a slob, the way he’s sprawled out, slouched low in his chair. Clearing his throat, he sits up and wracks his mind for something to say.

Literally anything at all will do.

Sam’s coming up blank and he refuses to blurt out something like last time.

Challa’s slips out of his coat to reveal another black sweater underneath, carefully hanging it over the back of his chair. He’s got a necklace looped tight around his neck with a narrow wooden pendant that’s partially hidden by the neck of his sweater. Unlike Sam, Challa very obviously works out multiple times a week, his arms clearly defined under the clinging fabric.

Sam finds himself staring at his collarbones and still can’t think of a single damn thing to say.

He opens his mouth, praying that he won’t mention cats or those collarbones, and Challa raises an eyebrow at him, but luckily Professor Wheatley comes in a moment later, dumping a pile of books and papers on the lectern and saving Sam from whatever absurd thing that was about to spill out.

“Mr. N'Yami,” she says, regarding Challa from behind her tortoise frame glasses. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until next week. I was under the impression you had no interest in sitting through a lecture on the Congo during King Leopold’s reign.”

Challa shrugs one shoulder. “I changed my mind.”

“I see.” Wheatley’s smiling a little. She always seems to be some mix of resigned and delighted when Challa raises his hand to argue with her. It’s really some of the most polite and academic debating Sam’s ever heard in a classroom. 

Wheatley was born in South Africa (“ _ My father is Black, my mother, an Afrikaner, and under Apartheid my very existence was illegal _ ,” she said on the first day of class) but raised by her aunt in Ohio, and mostly appreciates having a perspective in her class from someone who’s actually from one of the countries they are talking about. Sometimes, she’ll have to say,  _ “This has been a fascinating conversation, Mr. N’Yami, but I have half an hour left to get through the rest of the material. Perhaps you’d like to continue this discussion during office hours?” _

Sam wonders if he’s allowed to tag along to those office hours, to take notes on the rest of their conversations.

“I’ll email you my outline for the lecture I’m giving on Wakandan isolation during The Scramble if you’d like to read through it,” Wheatley says, shuffling through her notes. “And I’m sure you’ll be in my office next week to point out what I’ve got wrong.”

Challa grins. “You are not usually wrong, Mhambi. Just not as nuanced as I would prefer.”

Professor Wheatley laughs and turns her back on them, connecting her laptop to the projector and setting up for the lecture.

Sam looks at Challa with wide eyes. 

“Yes?” asks Challa, frowning at Sam.

“You called her by her first name?” Sam whispers.

Challa shakes his head and chuckles. “We are good friends. I am in her office more than I am at my house, or so it feels.”

“And she doesn’t mind that you just skip the lectures that you aren’t interested in?”

“It is not a lack of interest in this case,” Challa says, serious now. “This one will make your stomach turn, my friend. I’ve heard enough of the Belgian Barbarian to last a lifetime.”

Sam swallows, and nods. He read the trigger warnings on the syllabus for this particular lecture, and did a little Googling on Leopold II to mentally prepare himself. It’s pretty fucking horrifying.

“Plus,” continues Challa. “I’m not actually enrolled in this class. Mhambi lets me sit in when I am in the mood.”

“Huh,” says Sam. “So you sit in on history lectures and go argue with Professor Wheatley during her office hours? For  _ fun _ ?”

Challa looks faintly embarrassed, hunching his shoulders and twiddling his thumbs. For the first time since Sam met him, his haughty composure slips and his perfect posture disappears. He looks smaller suddenly, nervous and unsure.

“Yes?” His answer sounds like a question.

Sam grins at him. “Cool,” he says, begrudgingly turning away as Professor Wheatley starts class.

* * *

 

They get coffee after class and then settle together at Sam’s favorite table in the stacks to study. It’s dark out when they part ways, and Sam’s got Challa’s number programed in his phone.

He’s made it home, cooked dinner, eaten it, and played more rounds of Mario Kart with Bucky than Steve would prefer before Sam wonders why Challa changed his mind about coming to class today.

* * *

 

Challa becomes part of Sam’s Tuesday and Thursday routine. 

They meet up outside Phillips Hall, or sometimes right inside the entrance, if Challa gets there before him and starts shivering, no where near used to the DC weather yet. Challa doesn’t have morning classes, so he’s always newly awake at noon, yawning as he trails along behind Sam up to the third floor.

Sam stays quiet while they settle in the front row, sometimes color coordinating his notes while Challa rests with his head on his desk, eyes closed. Sometimes Challa scoots close to Sam’s desk, watching Sam highlight and annotate, as if the sound of the pen scratching the paper is as much noise as Challa can handle when he’s still not fully awake.

After class they usually eat before going to the library. They linger over lunch longer than they should because they both always have a billion questions for each other. Challa is perpetually baffled and fascinated by the US and seems to have chosen Sam to help him understand just what the hell all Americans everywhere are thinking. Sam is perpetually baffled and fascinated by Challa himself.

The kid is twenty-two, but somehow has the Wakandan equivalents to a phd in physics and a masters in engineering. He’s here for an academic year - not even part of a semester abroad program, but as a full on enrolled student despite having no interest in actually finishing a degree at GW - taking poli sci and foreign affairs classes, dropping in on history and ethnic studies classes with professors that will indulge him for “fun”. 

When Sam asks why the hell anyone would do that, Challa sits up straight, raises his chin, and gives Sam an answer full of vague platitudes, talking about “cultural exchange” and “a valuable learning experience”. It’s suddenly like watching someone who is very well versed in PR giving a press conference, like he’s using a lot of nice words without actually saying much of anything. Sam doesn’t ask again.

The way Challa sighs and frowns and complains about his classes sure makes it seem like this year in DC of cultural exchanges and learning opportunities was not his idea.

Nothing about Challa’s time as a GW student makes much sense until Sam watches Challa get dropped off on campus in sleek black Mercedes, Ayo behind the wheel. When Sam gapes over the car, Challa does that elegant, one shoulder shrug he does when he’s particularly unimpressed, and says, “It will do, I suppose,” like he’s used to much nicer rides.

It takes Sam a few weeks to figure out that Challa, Ayo, and Oyoke are somehow renting a fucking mansion on O Street. The place allegedly has five bedrooms and a swimming pool, but Challa talks about it as if it doesn’t quite live up to his tastes. “It was built in 1900,” Challa says when Sam asks. “Is that old for America?”

So maybe Challa is the son of some obscenely wealthy vibranium excavator and is here on some sort of intelligence gathering mission to report back to the family company before they decide to go into business with the US.

Sam’s got about a thousand other theories, but Challa very obviously doesn’t answer questions when he doesn’t want to, so Sam keeps them to himself. 

Challa gets softer when he talks about his family, losing that refined edge. He looks more his age, less mature and composed. His perfect posture falls into a rounded shoulder slump, his gaze far away and his smile soft. He tells Sam about his brilliant younger sister, Shuri, and her inventions. How he misses the colors of his mother’s art that hangs all around their house. His feelings on his father seem more complicated, but Challa very obviously respects the guy. Although Sam still thinks Challa might resent him a little, if he is the reason Challa has to suffer through a year away from Wakanda.

Challa really misses Wakanda.

Which works out well for Sam because Wakanda is the stuff of legends and he would gladly hear Challa talk about his home for hours, even goes out of his way to encourage it, because Sam wants to know everything. There’s nowhere like Wakanda.

It’s the only African country that managed to completely avoid colonization (even Ethiopia was briefly colonized by Italy during WWII and Liberia is just another can of rather bizarre worms).

Protected and isolated by its natural borders - craggy mountains covered in thick jungle, deep caves surrounded by dank swamps, high plateaus lined with steep cliffs, wide rivers infested with crocodiles - Wakanda was particularly defensible when Europeans started swarming deep into the heart of Africa, first as so called explorers and then as straight up conquerors.

In the late 19th century when a bunch of old, white imperialists got together and divided an entire fucking continent up among themselves like so much chump change (scrambling to get their greedy, murderous, racist hands on as much of Africa as they could manage), Wakanda was small enough to be considered more trouble than it was worth after a few skirmishes that left a whole bunch of Europeans dead, especially with the massive and resource rich Congo a hop, skip, and a jump away. (And again fuck Leopold for what went down there).

Conquering Wakanda was probably on some powerful European’s to do list at some point during the 20th century, but a few world wars and a global depression proved distracting, and Wakanda was able to isolate itself and thrive for a century.

The whole time it had been sitting on a priceless cache of vibranium, among other valuable resources, developing advanced technology and quietly sending its best and brightest to study at all the most prestigious institutions abroad, without the rest of the world noticing. It finally emerged as one of the richest nations in the world during the later years of decolonization in the 70s, and the white supremacists leaders of the world collectively shit a brick.

But Wakanda had wealth, power, and a stable government that proved too deeply rooted and secure for even the most nefarious of CIA schemes to overthrow - although they definitely tried - and an ancient society never destabilized and sucked dry by some colonial overlord.

In the decades since, Wakanda has used its considerable wealth to make its neighbors less dependent on foreign aid, supporting non corrupt politicians, assisting with free elections in burgeoning democracies, and sending in their own military to root out violence in Rwanda and the DRC before the UN could so much as consider sending its own bumbling and ineffective forces. They’ve invested in infrastructure throughout the continent, creating roads and flight paths and trade routes between African countries, when before the majority of African trade was still setup to follow old colonial routes, all those resources flowing out of the continent instead of staying within it, even decades after independence in some places.

They’re done more to combat neocolonialism than all those billions in foreign aid, the years of foreign investment, and every white voluntourist, trapezing around the continent for a couple weeks of do-goodery and a Facebook profile picture surrounded by smiling Black kids, combined.

Sam is a fan, but everything he knew about Wakanda came out of a book before he met Challa. And given Wakandas continued isolationism and general distrust of the world at large, those books are few and far between, typically lacking detail.

So he listens with rapt fascination as Challa talks quietly about spending nights high on a mesa, surrounded by tall grass, looking at stars so bright Challa was sure he could just reach out pluck them right out of the sky when he was a kid. He talks about the gardens surrounding his family home, a hodgepodge of big bright flowers and crops, interwoven with streams and a gravel path, all twisting around a big moabi tree in the center. He talks about getting lost in a cave for twelve hours with his friend Nakia when they were eleven, before their fathers managed to find them, and the glowing bracelet Shuri made for him when he confessed how scared he’d been in the dark.

“I’d love to go someday,” Sam says.

Challa beams full on, eyes scrunched up, nostrils flared, mouth wide and teeth parted, smiling with his whole face, his whole body. He’s radiant and Sam’s breath snags in his chest.

“Truly?” Challa asks. 

“Yeah,” Sam says. “You know, they have a semester abroad program with the University of Wakanda now? It’s only, like, a couple years old. But I’m thinking about it for next year. Assuming I get in. It’s pretty damn prestigious.”

Challa nods along for a moment but then he freezes abruptly, smile falling from his face. It’s like watching a flower die in time-lapse.

“You okay, man?” Sam asks, replaying his words in his head and trying to figure out if he inadvertently said something offensive.

“I need a book,” Challa declares, standing from the table, legs of his chair scraping against the thin carpet. He sounds as authoritative as every one of Sam’s commanding officers. He stands like them too, posture straight and shoulders back.

“Good thing we’re in a library, then,” Sam mutters, frowning up at him and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Yes.” Challa turns on his heel and disappears into the stacks without even packing up his stuff. 

Sam shakes his head and gets back to his reading, forcing himself not to look up every few seconds to see if Challa’s coming back. He does, nearly an hour later, with no books in hand. He nods at Sam as he gathers his things but offers no explanation for his weird behavior as he leaves.

Sam has a hard time falling asleep that night and doesn’t really relax again until he finds Challa waiting for him outside Phillips two days later, tried but smiling, like nothing happened at all.

* * *

 

Sam always packs his own lunch - food on campus ain’t cheap and Sam’s cooking is better anyway - but Challa usually buys something and grimaces as he eats, like its a real trial to keep it down.

“I take it you’re not a fan of sandwiches,” Sam says, nodding as Challa eats, struggling valiantly through each bite.

“Is this supposed to be meat?” Challa turns his nose up at some pale turkey falling out between two pieces of soggy bread.

“I think so?” Sam bites back a laugh. Challa looks so pained and so determined to just get through this meal that Sam can’t help but take pity on him. He slides his container of red beans and rice across the table, handing over a fork.

Challa looks extremely wary, but he takes a careful bite. Sam grins when his face lights up.

“It has flavor!” Challa exclaims, going for another bite. “And spice! I can actually taste it! You made this?”

Sam shrugs and brags a little, making sure to give credit to his ma for the recipe.

“It could be spicer,” Challa decides a few bites later.

Sam grins and pulls a bottle of hot sauce out of his backpack. Challa laughs, delighted, and shakes out a liberal amount.

He brings double the portions every Tuesday and Thursday after that, skewing his meal planning towards things designed to get better spending a night in the fridge. Challa is a big fan of gumbo.

A couple weeks later, when Challa is lamenting the fact that neither him nor Ayo nor Okoye ever learned to cook, Sam invites them all to Thanksgiving dinner at the apartment on a whim. After a thorough explanation of what the hell Thanksgiving is and why its a bullshit holiday but a good chance to eat a nice meal with the people you love, Challa accepts the invite.

Suddenly, the plan to eat pizza and day drink with the Barnes-Rogerses will not suffice.

* * *

Steve looks a little wide-eyed when Sam hands over the shopping list for Thanksgiving and Bucky gets weirdly into crafting his own centerpieces to spruce up the card tables Sam’s got set up in the living room for the meal, but overall they take the change of plans in stride. They don’t even mock Sam when they find him already up and cooking at eight in the morning on Thanksgiving Day.

Sam lets them linger over a cup of coffee before setting them to work chopping things. His roommates make adequate sous chefs, although Bucky keeps pretending to slice up his fancy metal hand and Steve apparently finds this so funny that he’s got to take a break to make out with his husband every time. 

Despite the lack of professionalism, they manage to stay on schedule, even if Sam’s got to call his ma four times before noon to confirm that he is not fucking up the sweet potato pie too badly. 

“All this for Steve and Bucky?” Ma asks during their fifth phone call, after she’s talked Sam down from thinking his broccoli and rice casserole is too liquidy. “What happened to beer and video games?”

Ma was far from impressed with Sam’s original plans for Thanksgiving. She and Malcolm are in Harlem for the week, but Sam’s been avoiding the city since he got back. There are too many people, his three of his dad’s four sisters and his ma’s two brothers, plus all their spouses and their kids and all their kids’ kids. And then when you throw in the great aunts and both Sam’s grandmas and then a handful of people who aren’t actually blood relatives but might as well be--

It’s just a lot. 

And maybe Sam could handle one or two of them at a time - has handled the small groups that have made the trip down to Charlottesville in the last couple of years - but going to Harlem is an all or nothing deal. Answering questions on his deployment and if he misses flying and explaining just what he’s going to do with a history degree anyhow, is not something he’s felt up to yet.

He thinks his ma mostly understands, even if he’s never talked to her about it, because she always invites him and frowns a little when he turns her down, but she never pushes. Not like she pushed about applying for school. Not like she pushed about hanging out more with Steve and Bucky when he left that first breakfast with both their numbers in his phone. Not like she pushed when he wanted to study history but thought he should major in something more practical.

“Naw, we’ve got a few more people coming now,” Sam admits, rolling his eyes as Steve pushes Bucky up against the counter to kiss him again.

“Natasha?”

“Nope. She’s in Baltimore with her girlfriend.”

“America?”

“Went home to Asheville.”

“Who else do you even know?”

“Wow, Ma, way to drag me. I know other people!”

“Yeah, but not people that you invite over and decide to make a last minute feast for.”

Sam sighs and hopes she doesn’t ask him why he’s failed to mention Challa before now. He doesn’t have an answer.

“It’s this kid who sits in on my Central African history class sometimes and his two roommates,” Sam says.

On the other end of the line his mother hums, waiting for more detail. 

“They’re Wakandan,” Sam explains. “Here for a year. Thought they should get to experience a Wilson style Thanksgiving.”

“They wouldn’t want to miss out on that,” Ma agrees. “So they’re students?”

“Challa is, the kid in my class. I’m not sure what the deal is with the other two. It kinda seems like they are mostly here to keep Challa company? Ayo works in the library and Okoye teaches self defense classes with Natasha.”

“Huh,” Ma says. “Well that sounds like an interesting group”. 

In the background he can hear kids shrieking, someone scolding them, and then at least three other someones laughing. He’s hit with a sudden pang of homesickness, sharp and brief, as he remembers every holiday growing up, all of them crammed into someone's apartment and occasionally spilling over into the hallway and the neighbors apartments too. Harlem hasn’t been his home in a long time, but they’re still his people and he misses them.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider his no holidays in Harlem policy. Christmas seems too ambitious, but maybe Easter.

“Send me pictures of the food before you dig in,” Ma says, obviously distracted by whatever is happening with the kids.

“I will. All spread out on the table. It actually looks kinda nice.”

“I know,” she says. “Bucky sent me pictures of his centerpieces.”

“You and Barnes text?” 

“Hell yes we do,” Bucky calls from the kitchen.

“Of course,” Ma says like it should be obvious. “And Steve, too. How else would I check up on you?”

“Ma, I call you three times a week,” Sam mutters.

His ma laughs and says, “I love you, Sammy. Call me again if you need.”

“Yeah, yeah. Love you, too.”

* * *

 

Sam’s a little worried that it’ll be awkward. Everyone has met before, but it’s up to Sam as the uniting factor here to carry the bulk of the conversation. Steve does all right in most social settings, but Bucky is silent with people he doesn’t really know and Sam still sometimes has no fucking clue what to say at any given moment. Challa has been known to get weird and flee the scene for no apparent reason, so Sam is expecting some moments of pained silence and cultural misunderstanding.

But when Sam buzzes their guests up, Okoye immediately hugs Bucky (they take some advanced martial arts class together, apparently) and Ayo smiles at Steve as she hands him a bottle of wine and a bottle of something that says  _ Konyagi _ across the label in gold script. Challa strides in last. He’s got a shy smile and a bowl of mashed potatoes for Sam. When he insisted on cooking something Sam figured there were very few ways one could fuck up mashed potatoes.

“Hello,” murmurs Challa as Okoye praises Bucky’s table settings and Steve takes Ayo’s coat behind them. 

And Sam takes a deep breath, all the stress that comes from entertaining and his own self imposed perfectionism leaving him in a wave as he smiles back. “Hi,” he says.

* * *

 

At any given hours of the day or night during finals, Sam can find someone he knows at his favorite study spot in the stacks. America, Bucky, and Challa all filter in and out. Sam leaves them all there for his first final in Anthropology, and when he gets back a couple hours later only Challa remains, joined by a handful of QPOC kids who barely glance up from their frantic typing to nod at him. Challa kicks out the chair next to him and closes his book with a resounding thunk when Sam takes the seat.

“Hey, man,” Sam whispers, leaning close to avoid getting shushed by at least six sleep deprived, overly caffeinated, stressed as fuck students. “How’s it going?”

Challa purses his lips together, sitting up straight and lifting his chin, cloaking himself in that strange air of aristocracy like he sometimes does when he’s feeling particularly haughty about something.

“Exams,” he says, weighing the word carefully. He pauses like he’s preparing for a big speech and wants his audience hanging on his every word. Sam waits as Challa takes a deep breath and then says, “Suck.”

Sam blinks, waiting for more, but it never comes. Finals might be getting to him, because Challa never uses one word when sixteen will do and he never, ever gets anywhere near cursing.

“Suck,” Sam repeats.

“Yes,” Challa nods solemnly. “Tests suck. They suck. They are terrible. I do not like them nor are they are an accurate or universally accessible way to confirm that a student has mastered the material.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, because he would much rather write a 20 page paper over the course of several weeks than sit through an hour long test. “They sure do, buddy.”

Challa sighs and stretches his arms high above his head. Sam stares down at the tabletop just to avoid staring at Challa.

“Walk with me,” Challa says a with a hint too much volume. As Sam predicted, four young faces pop up from behind books and computer screens to scowl at them.

“What?” asks Sam.

“You just took a test,” Challa says. “You need to take a break before you write your paper, or it will not meet the high standards you set for yourself. Walk with me, and it will be better. Walk with me and tell me of your exam, or talk to me about anything at all, before we come back to this madness.” He scoffs and gestures around the library and now there are at least nine people scowling at them so yeah, a walk is probably a good idea.

Campus is still and beautiful. The night is cold and Challa walks a little closer than he usually would, shivering against the cold despite his puffy black coat, wool hat, and ski gloves. The whole thing is so nice that Sam can’t stand to ruin it by talking about school, so he tells Challa what it feels like to fly instead.

* * *

 

It’s the last night of term. Sam finished his last final three days ago, but he’s not going home until tomorrow because he was waiting on Bucky to be done. The Barnes-Rogerses have no family but each other (Bucky’s generally hates the gays and Steve’s is all dead) so Sam’s ma invited them to Christmas in Charlottesville this year. 

Sam sighed and grumbled when his roommates made Christmas plans directly with his ma, leaving him out of it entirely, but he’s not so secretly pleased about the whole thing. Steve and Bucky sorta brought Sam into their little family over the course of this last year, when he was sad and lonely and isolated without even truly realizing it during freshman year, and the least he can do is share his in return.

Plus Steve’s got a car and Sam’s relieved that he won’t have to brave public transportation during the holiday season to get to his ma’s this year.

He’s in bed with the lights off, curled under three blankets. Collectively they are cheap as shit when it comes to running the heat, so layers are always necessary in the apartment. It’s probably too early to go to sleep, even though it’s dark out, but finals were brutal this semester and Sam hasn’t recovered. 

He’s halfway to dreamland when his phone vibrates by his ear.

It’s a text from Challa, just three snowflakes. Sam’s frowning at it when another comes in, a long string of exclamation points. Challa is much less formal with his texting than he is with his speaking, and Sam finds it hopelessly endearing.

Smiling, Sam texts back three questions marks because apparently they are keeping this conversation wordless.

A moment later, Challa calls him. He barely waits for Sam to answer with a, “What the hell, Challa,” before he says, “Snow!”

Sam brain hasn’t quite realized that it doesn’t need to freak out about school for a whole month, so it takes him a few seconds to get what Challa’s so happy about it. Then he sits up, shivering against the cold as he throws off the blankets and pads over to the window. He pulls back the curtain to confirm that yes, that’s snow. Big fluffy flakes, drifting down and lighting up against the streetlight below Sam’s window.

“Good job, man,” Sam says, chuckling. “That  _ is _ snow.”

Sam’s being a bit of an ass, but Challa is too excited to notice. 

“It’s snowing, Sam! That is snow! It is on the ground and in the sky!”

His enthusiasm is contagious and Sam grins. “Yeah, first snow of the season is something special.”

They’ve had a few flurries so far, but nothing substantial enough to stick. There might only be half an inch on the ground now, but the snow is falling steadily and it will be deeper by morning, if it keeps up like this. Sam’s always loved the first snow of the season, so he doesn’t even worry about how much worse this will make the trip to Charlottesville. 

When they were kids, Sarah used to sneak him out of bed on snowy nights so they could sit crowded together in the windowsill and watch it come down. Ma caught them everytime and scolded them for being out of bed, but she’d give them another minute or two, draping a blanket around their shoulders and standing at their backs, the three of them quiet and peaceful and safe.

“Come outside,” Challa says in his ear.  He must be momentarily forgetting his hatred of the cold in the face of the first snow of the season. Or, more likely, the first snow of his life.

“I’m sleeping,” Sam says even as he moves away from his window towards the closet.

“You are not sleeping.” Challa scoffs. “It’s not even nine o’clock. That is far too early for sleep. Also you cannot sleep and talk to me. Come outside.”

“What, are you like,  _ here _ ?”

“No, I am in front of my house.”

“You want me to come all the way to your house?” Sam groans and pulls his thickest hoodie from the top of his closet.

“Perhaps we could meet in the middle? On campus?”

“Alright,” Sam agrees, digging out his boots from the back of his closet. “We’ll meet in the middle.”

* * *

 

They are far from the only people on campus. The dorms won’t close until tomorrow and there are still enough students left that a pretty good sized snowball fight is in progress on Healy Lawn by the time Sam gets there. The snow isn’t ideal for snowballs - too fluffy and dry, not wet and thick enough - but it's a good night to be out. There is no wind, nothing sharp and biting, just the gentle kind of snow that makes Sam want to tilt his face towards the sky and catch flakes on his tongue. 

He does that for a minute, standing far enough back from the snowball fight to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, and he doesn’t open his eyes until he feels Challa, pressed to his side.

“Hey,” Sam murmurs, tuning to look at Challa, wide-eyed as he watches it snow, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. 

It hits Sam, right in the chest, just how Challa is beautiful, and for a moment he can’t breathe.

Challa glances at Sam and then goes back to staring around at the snow, all awestruck and delighted, totally unaware of Sam’s inability to take in air. Sam starts to count his breaths like he does during a panic attack and manages to recover, Challa none the wiser.

“Hello,” Challa says before tipping his head back, closing his eyes, and sticking out his tongue, mimicking Sam.

Sam laughs and finds Challa much more enthralling than the snow.

“I was invited to participate in that snowball fight,” Challa says, face still tilted towards the sky.

Sam swallows and does not feel up to explaining that something as harmless as a snowball fight is still too violent for him. “Knock yourself out, man. I’ll just chill over here.”

“Hmm.” Challa turns to look at Sam, a little furrow appearing between his eyebrows as he frowns. “No. You think I would command you to join me here and then leave you to ineffectively toss snow at strangers?”

“Whoa, command is a little intense,” Sam says, laughing. “I’m not really one for following orders these days.”

Challa huffs. “My point still stands.”

“Thanks, man,” Sam says, knocking into Challa’s side until he’s done frowning and once more trying to look at every snowflake covering the ground all at once.

They walk around campus instead, Challa kicking his feet at piles of snow and giggling as the flakes fly. He’s dressed like he’s ready to climb Mount Everest but is shivering anyway, pressed close to Sam and hiding his face in his scarf every few minutes. As they pass a group of students attempting to make a snowman, and failing miserably, Challa listens attentively to Sam explaining that this type of snow is bad for both snowballs and snowmen. 

“Well, what is it good for then?” Challa asks, voice all serious like there’s going to be a test on this later. Sam might not be the only one who isn’t quite out of finals-mode.

“It’s damn pretty,” Sam says, gesturing around campus. The world around them is glowing, the sky faintly pink in that way it gets when the clouds trap all the ambient light of the city and then reflect it back off the snow on the ground. GW is a pretty stunning campus on an average day, and it's downright gorgeous tonight, all stone buildings and big, bare trees. 

“Yes,” Challa agrees. “What else?”

So Sam teaches Challa about snow angels. The ass of his jeans gets soaked in the process, but it's worth it to watch Challa meticulously move his arms and legs in the snow, carefully and gracefully keeping his feet inside the angel so he doesn’t fucking up the silhouette as he stands. He bends down to draw a halo in the snow with a finger and then leaps away from the angel, coming to stand next to Sam.

He beams up at Sam, so fucking pleased with himself. And something about Challa’s lips, all pink with cold, and the snow melting on his cheeks, and the way he called Sam to come play in the snow, still has Sam’s chest aching, even if he’s managed to get his breath back.

Suddenly, he doesn’t want to go home for Christmas, because it means a month without Challa. Suddenly, Sam would take finals all over again, just to keep on seeing Challa everyday. 

Sam’s going to miss Challa over break, and that will be much worse at the end of the school year, when Challa goes back to Wakanda.

So Sam soaks up as much as Challa as he can get, staying out until Challa’s teeth begin to chatter. And when it looks like Challa’s about to call it  night, Sam drags him into the nearest open coffee shop for hot chocolate, just to push back their inevitable goodbye a little longer.

* * *

 

Due to some glaring deficiency as a parent, Sarah somehow never taught her girls how to play dominoes. They think the tiles are all for setting up and knocking down, and Sam watches in abject horror as they dump his father’s old set out all over the kitchen floor Christmas Eve morning.

“We’re going to make a J,” Jamie explains. “For Jamie.”

“No!” shireks Jody. “Its for Jody.”

“Jamie.”

“Jody.”

“Jamie!”

“Jody!

Sam watches them square off with increasing horror, wishing he’d managed to down more than only one cup of coffee. He’d have no idea how to handle this at the most caffeinated of times, but at least he’d have shot saying something.

Luckily, Sarah is not actually a complete failure of a parent, because she doesn’t even glance up from the paper she’s got spread out on the kitchen table as she solves the whole argument by saying, “J can stand for both your names. Or make two Js.”

With another cup of coffee in him, Sam can no longer stand to see his father’s dominos so thoroughly abused, so he badgers the girls into gathering them all up and spreading them facedown on the kitchen table. Sarah does not look thrilled by this development, but she collects her newspaper and wanders off to join David and Malcolm in the living room, leaving them to it.

The Barnes-Rogerses are still sleeping in, the lazy fuckers, and Sam briefly considers waiting for them to emerge to get a game started because it’s better with more than three players, but he ultimately figures the girls could use a few practice rounds.

They are both watching him warily. He’s made a real effort to talk to them in the last year, always asking about their friends and their hobbies and their school, but he’s never instigated a game like this and they obviously don’t know what to make of it.

He gets them fully on board as he shows them how to shuffle and they have the time of their young lives pushing the tiles all over the surface of the table. 

“Okay,” he says as the girls quiet down. “Draw seven.”

They end up playing for most of the day, Sam starting them off with straight dominos and adding in more complicated variations as they get better. Both girls protest loudly when Sarah insists they go home to get ready for church.

Sarah hugs him for a long time and sniffs into his shirt on her way out the door.

* * *

 

Sam is the only one surprised when Jamie and Jody fight over who gets to sit squished in next to him in the easy chair Christmas morning. They end up in a pile on the floor instead, and Sam has a lap full of wrapping paper by the time they’ve torn through their presents.

Sarah doesn’t even have to remind them to say goodbye to Sam when they go home that night, both girls hugging him tight and calling him Uncle Sam as they make him promise to play more dominos with them in the morning.

Alone in bed in the guest room that’s been dubbed his, Sam cries a little and then texts Challa a picture of him with his nieces, covered in scraps of wrapping paper and beaming. Challa replies immediately with a series of happy looking emojis and a picture of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

* * *

 

When Natasha invited them over for New Years, Sam thought it would be more of an intimate gathering but its really closer to a raucous party. Pausing on the front porch of the small condo she shares with three other grad students, Bucky turns to look at Sam and hesitates to open the door.

“She told me it was just a hand full of people,” Bucky mutters.

Sam nods along, grimacing back. Through the front windows he can make out people dancing in the livingroom, the pounding music already giving him a headache. “She promised me no one under twenty-one was getting an invite. I guess those grad students can really party the one time of year they’ve got the time for it.”

“Is that a goddamn disco ball?” Bucky cranes his neck to peek through the window.

“At least it’s not a strobe light.” Sam’s pretty sure Bucky would be halfway down the block already if it was a strobe light, Sam hot on his heels.

They listen to the music for another few minutes, before he and Bucky both turn to look at Steve with wide, beseeching eyes.

“Okay,” Steve says, squaring his shoulders. “We’re already here. Let’s have one drink, and if you two don’t find some semi-quiet, well-lit corner to tuck yourselves into, we can leave after that.”

Sam agrees quickly, but it takes Bucky a few extra seconds to mentally brace himself for a raucous party, and then he opens the door, dragging Sam and Steve along behind him.

* * *

 

They do find a semi-quiet, well-lit corner to tuck themselves into, a little breakfast nook in the kitchen. Challa’s already there when they wander in to get drinks, reading a book and drinking out of a red solo cup. He grimaces whenever he brings whatever it is in the cup to his lips, and never takes his eyes off the page.

Sam pulls a beer out of the cooler at random and then immediately joins him, sliding into the bench seat next to him. Challa still doesn’t look up from his book, but he smiles and bumps his shoulder into Sam’s. He says, “Hello, Sam. Let me finish my page.”

Nodding, Sam sips his beer and watches Challa read. He smiles his way through the rest of his page and leans against Sam’s side. His black sweater looks particularly cozy tonight and Sam spent the majority of Christmas break convincing himself that he was not missing Challa, that his every third thought wasn’t stuck on what Challa was doing in New York and counting down the days until they both got back to DC, but that was bullshit. Because Challa is right here and Sam’s just happy. He’s happy to see him and happy to watch him read in the middle of a party.

It doesn’t take Challa more than a handful of seconds before he is carefully marking his page, setting his book aside, and turning to look at Sam, smiling even wider now.

“Hello,” he says again.

“Hey.” Sam can’t think of anything else to say so he just sorta smiles at Challa for awhile and Challa smiles back and it might be weird the way they are staring at each other, but Sam just sits there, happy, until Bucky joins them, taking a seat on the other side of the table.

“Where’re Ayo and Okoye?” Bucky asks because he has no manners and can’t even manage a proper hello.

Challa’s nostrils flare and he looks like there is something unpleasantly pungent right below his nose. “Dancing,” he says. “If you can even call it that.”

Bucky barks out a laugh. “Not impressed with the good old American bump and grind, huh?”

“Well, it’s the best you can do with this music,” Challa says. “It’s very simple, isn’t it? The beat.” He brings a hand to his heart and thumps his palm against his chest along with the song playing in the living room, the sound of the bass drum landing on each down beat. “Boom, boom, boom, boom. Where is the variety? The complexity? Do something else with the beat! Make it interesting! Not even a human heart beats with so little variance.”

Bucky nods around his beer. “Yeah, man. I hear you. We call that four on the floor. Boom, boom, boom, boom.”

“Why?” Challa asks, looking so adorably perplexed.

“It makes it easier to do this,” Sam says, fist pumping in time with the music and bobbing his head and shaking the bench with the enthusiasm of his movements. Bucky throws his head back and laughs but Challa looks at him with horror, his mouth dropping open.

“Are you having some sort of fit?” he asks, reaching out to grab Sam’s shoulder like he’s legitimately concerned that Sam’s in need of immediate medical assistance.

Sam shakes his head, bites his lip, and waggles his eyebrow, trying to look as ridiculous as possible. “No, man. Feel that groove. Oh, yeah. There it is.”

Challa cracks a smile and rolls his eyes, tugging on Sam’s fistpumping arm. “All right. That is more than enough of that.”

“I bet this is the exact kind of cultural learning and exchange you were expecting when you came here, huh?” says Bucky.

Challa smiles and keeps looking at Sam. “Well, perhaps not. But this place is growing on me.”

* * *

 

The music changes and people filter in and out of the kitchen, joining the conversation for a few minutes before drifting away. America stays for awhile, talking about her time home with her family and grinning as Challa extols the virtue and beauty of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, before she leaves to meet up with some QPOC kids at another party. 

Ayo and Okoye take a break from the dancing to complain to Sam about just how much time Challa wanted to spend staring at the giant Christmas tree. “If you think I will not be covering every tree I see in lights when we get home then you are wrong,” says Challa in his own defense. “It’s a lovely sight.”

Okoye drags Ayo back to the living room for more dancing when a song she likes comes back on and Challa sighs. “More four on the floor,” he says, shaking his head.

“They don’t seem to mind that good ol’ bump and grind,” Sam replies, nodding after Ayo and Okoye.

Challa rolls his eyes, elbows Sam in the ribs, and then ends up pressed up into his side. Sam’s not sure when he stretched his arm out along the back of the seat behind Challa, but it only seems natural to move his hand a little to rest it on Challa’s shoulder.

Sam stays there all night, getting up only to grab them fresh beers. Challa drinks them without grimacing and settles under Sam’s arm every time he returns.

“Tell me about this holiday,” Challa asks as they close in on midnight.

“Well, it’s traditional to get drunk off your ass.”

Challa snorts and gestures to all the beer bottles littering the table in front of them. “I feel we have managed that. What else?”

“Fireworks.” Sam drinks his beer in an attempt to hide his grimace. 

“You do not like fireworks,” Challa says. “Why?”

Sam shrugs.

“Ah, because you were a soldier.”

“Airmen,” Sam corrects abscently. “And they aren’t my favorite, but I can handle them. It can get real bad for some of the guys.” Steve and Bucky left an over an hour ago, hoping to get home before it started up. “It’s cold enough outside that people don’t tend to get as into it as they do for The 4th.”

“Hmm,” Challa says, considering. “We will skip that one. What else?”

Sam glances down at Challa’s lips and feels his cheeks heat. Looking away quickly, he clears his throat and says, “Uh, the big one is kissing. At midnight. Counting down the seconds until midnight and then kissing.”

“Hmm.”

“What about Wakanda? How do you celebrate the New Year?” Sam asks in a rush, desperate to change the subject before he can do something stupid like offer to help Challa with that particular tradition.

“Hmm.”

Sam bites his lip to keep from laughing. That little hum, coming deep from Challa’s chest, is a quirk that happens a lot more when Challa’s been drinking and is also the most adorable thing Sam’s ever heard.

“We do not have a new years,” Challa says. “We are aware of your calendar, of course, but our concept of time is different. Less linear. Certainly with no endings or beginnings. There are various holidays celebrating shifts to the next season, the next cycle, but not a new year.”

“Yeah? What do those celebrations look like?”

“There can be a fair amount of drinking.” Challa’s smile is lazy and slow, his gaze far off and eyes glassy. He’s soft like this, relaxed in a way he usually isn’t and Sam just likes looking at him. “Dancing to music much better than whatever this is.”

“Gotta love that four on the floor,” Sam says. “Is there food?”

“Oh, yes. A virtual smorgasbord.”

Something about Challa saying  _ smorgasbord _ in his smooth, elegant accent has Sam barking out a laugh and Challa laughs with him, even if it’s not that funny.

“Sometimes,” Challa murmurs, his face close to Sam’s than it was a heartbeat ago. “There’s even kissing.”

In the living room a cheer goes up and the countdown starts. Challa joins in at 7 and Sam just watches his lips move. 

When they get to 3, Challa huffs out an impatient breath and moves closer, pressing a gentle, closed-mouth kiss to the corner of Sam’s lips. The whole world goes quiet around Sam’s ears. He misses the rest of countdown and doesn’t breathe for a few heavy seconds.

“Happy New Year, Sam Wilson,” Challa whispers, his voice clear over the sounds of people celebrating in the next room when Sam’s ears start working again. “I am glad to spend it with you.”

* * *

 

On the first day of the spring semester, Sam finds Challa leaning against the wall next to Sam’s South African history class. Eyes closed, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest, a coffee in each hand, and he’s listing precariously to the right. One of the coffees is just a few moments away from getting dumped all over the floor.

After New Years, Sam went back to his ma’s house for the last 2 weeks of winter break. He hasn’t seen Challa since Ayo piled them all into her fancy sports car not long after midnight on New Years, dropping Sam off at his apartment. He was struggling to stay awake in the back seat last time Sam saw him and he’s apparently lost the fight to stay awake now.

“Boo,” says Sam but Challa is as unflappable as ever, does not startle and just slowly opens his eyes.

“What were you thinking, Sam,” Challa says, not even bothering to straighten up against the wall. He does tilt his hand to save a coffee, though. “Taking a class this early in the morning.”

Sam laughs. “It’s 9:30.”

“It may as well be the break of day.”

“Are you saying that you wouldn’t be sitting in on Wheatley’s class this semester if I wasn’t in it?” Sam asks.

Challa frowns at Sam like the answer should be very obvious. “It is the break of day, Sam. Of course I wouldn’t be here if not for you. Do you truly think I am not well versed in South African history? Nelson Mandela attended my sixteenth birthday celebration.”

Sam’s jaw drops. “What.”

Challa stands up straight, flailing a little as he un-crosses his arms and spilling a few drops of coffee on one of his many black sweaters. “This is yours,” he says, shoving the cup into Sam’s chest and then abruptly turning on his heel, pushing through the classroom door.

“Challa,” Sam says, jogging along behind him, holding the coffee with both hands. “What? Nelson Mandela? Really? How? What!”

They take seats in the front and Sam says,  _ “The _ Nelson Mandela? Really? Challa, really,” over and over again until Wheatley starts passing out syllabi.

* * *

 

A day later, and Sam just can’t let this Nelson Mandela thing go. Sam’s bitten back a lot of questions, given how cryptic Challa tends to be about his life in Wakanda when he’s not telling a personal anecdote about his family.  

He bides his time, listening to Challa rant about his classes as they eat lunch and asking a few benign questions about daily life in Wakanda to get Challa thinking about his home. 

Then he gets Challa into the library before his afternoon classes.

Hidden in the stacks, seated on the same side of their usual table, Sam and Challa play 20 Questions: The Nelson Mandela Edition.

Or Sam plays. Challa sits there, staring down at an open book on the tabletop and shaking his head, biting his lip to keep from laughing at the ever increasing absurdity of Sam’s questions.

“Did he show up to your birthday party by accident?” Sam whispers, right into Challa’s ear. After New Years, the boundaries of space between them evaporated and he’s close enough to smell Challa, his own breath tickling Challa’s neck. 

Challa snorts. “Accident? How, pray tell, would such an accident happen?”

“Like, you were having it at the Wakandan version of Chuck E Cheese and he just happened to show up for unrelated reasons.”

“What is Chuck E Cheese?”

“Did he meet your grandpa when they were both imprisoned at Robben Island?” Sam continues, slinging an arm around the back of Challa’s chair.

“Hmm,” Challa says. He rolls his eyes down at the book and obviously doesn’t know the rules to 20 Questions, because that answer was not a yes or a no.

“Was he there as the entertainment?” Sam asks, deciding to go back to completely absurd instead of actually plausible. 

Challa glares at him. “You are calling Nelson Mandela  _ the entertainment _ ?”

“Hey, don’t look at me like that! For all I know he used to moonlight as a birthday clown or something.”

“And now you’re calling him a clown.”

“In a funny, happy, wants to bring joy to little children kinda way, yeah. I guess so?”

“I was sixteen, far from a little child.” Challa turns the page in his book decisively, snapping his wrist.

“Yeah, you were sixteen when Nelson Mandela came to your sixteenth birthday party. Why was that again?”

Beside him, Challa goes still. For a split second, Sam’s convinced that he’s pushed too far, but then Challa giggles. It’s a ridiculous noise, squeaky and silly, echoing off the bookshelves. They’d be getting shushed from all sides, if more people camped out in this part of the library on the second day of term.

“You just never give up,” Challa says. He takes a gasping breath and giggles some more, covering his mouth with both hands. “And you called Nelson Mandela a birthday clown. I am not even sure what that is. Could I find one at this Chuck E Cheese?”

Challa’s delight is catching and Sam presses his face into Challa’s shoulder to muffle his own laughter. It’s ridiculous and strange, and Sam remembers this about the person he used to be. Once upon a time, he was goofy, made silly jokes because he liked to make other people laugh, because it was fun.

He especially likes making Challa laugh. And he might have failed to figure out his connection to Nelson freaking Mandela, but he can’t be too disappointed about it when he’s made Challa laugh.

They’re both still gigging when Sam lifts his head at the same moment Challa turns to look at him, and suddenly Challa’s mouth it right there. The laughter dies off, and Sam can hear his own breathing, heavier than it should be. The moment hangs, the air hot and thick between them.

Challa’s breath hitches, and Sam wants to be the one that has Challa’s breath hitching as badly as he wants to make Challa laugh.

Sam remembers this, too, the ache of wanting someone and the weight of anticipation in the long seconds before that wanting becomes doing, that desire translated into touch.

Swallowing auditibly, Challa looks at Sam’s lips before dragging his gaze back to Sam’s eyes, and Sam leans closer. He moves slowly, reveling in the moment. Challa’s breath is warm against his lips, and Sam only manages to keep his eyes open because he wants to watch Challa’s as they flicker shut.

Sam exhales, so close now, but then Challa’s gone, leaving Sam’s side cold. Before Sam can blink, Challa’s standing.

And then he disappears. Unlike the last time he suddenly fled the library, all those months ago, he doesn’t leave his books behind.

* * *

 

Huddled on the couch in the dark living room, Sam is staring at the blank screen of their TV when Steve and Bucky get home. 

They’re all giggly and wrapped up in each other as they awkwardly shuffle through the front door. Apparently unwilling to let go of each other for even a second to get through the narrow entryway, they turn sideways instead so they’ll fit.

Bucky’s carrying his backpack and Steve’s with the fancy metal arm, free hand clutching Steve’s hip as he whispers something in Steve’s ear that’s making him laugh and blush. They look really fucking happy. They look really fucking in love.

Sometimes living with a happily married couple sucks. Their very apparent marital bliss is just making Sam that much more miserable.

Steve gets on the lights and then jumps in surprise when he sees Sam on the couch. “Oh,” he says, blushing even more as he tries to wiggle away from Bucky’s lips on his neck. “Hey. Were you sitting in the dark?”

Bucky straightens up and glares in Sam’s direction. It took Sam months to realize that scowling is Bucky’s default expression, and does not necessarily mean he is upset with Sam. In this case, the scowling is probably actually concern. Or Bucky’s weird attempt to glare away whatever is bugging Sam. 

The last time Bucky found Sam sitting alone in the dark was after a plastic bag blew past him on the street and the movement in his peripheral made him freak out, like it was an IED or some shit. He barely made it home and was lucky that Bucky arrived only half an hour after. He just sat with Sam, talking softly about nothing, until Sam could think again. Could breath again.

This is not quite a thought-trash-was-a-bomb level freak out, but Sam appreciates Bucky going on high alert anyway.

“At ease, Sargent Barnes,” Sam says. “I’m not mid panic attack here.”

Bucky nods and actually does relax a little. 

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, hanging up his coat on the rack and then pulling off Bucky’s too. 

Sam takes a deep breath. “I did something stupid.”

“Is this tea kind of stupid or beer kind of stupid?” Steve asks, moving into the kitchen.

“Beer,” Sam says.

Steve sticks a bottle in his hands a minute later, and then settles in an easy chair, all squished in with his husband because the two of them are ridiculously codependent and can’t stand to not be touching for ten damn minutes.

“Well?” Bucky demands.

“I have a crush on a college kid,” Sam whispers. He’s so horrified he’s got to hide his face in his hands.

“Challa’s not a kid,” Steve says.

“He’s what?” Bucky asks. “Twenty-two? Twenty-three? And he’s traveled the world? And he’s got a shitload of degrees already?”

“It’s not like he’s some overstimulated freshmen right out of high school, trying beer for the first time and failing at doing laundry,” Steve says.

Challa probably does not do his own laundry, but that is besides the point.

Sam blinks at them through the web of his fingers. “Who said it’s Challa? I didn’t say it’s Challa. Why are we talking about Challa?”

“Well, you are talking about Challa most of the time these days,” Steve says. “So why would right now be the first time in the history of this year that you’re  _ not _ talking about him?”

“And we’ve got no fucking leftovers anymore because you’ve been bringing him lunch for weeks,” says Bucky.

“I’m just interested in Wakanda, alright?” Sam says, dropping his hands. The damn two-headed married-monster is right on the money, but he hates that it was so obvious to them. Sam didn’t have it figured out for himself until he was leaning in to kiss Challa like it was natural, like it was something he just does all the damn time, without thought or fear of rejection. “And the poor guy was choking down cafeteria food like it was prison rations. What was I supposed to do?”

“Give him lunch,” Steve says. “Because you like him.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Okay,” says Steve, patient even while his husband rolls his eyes and curses at Sam under his breath. “What college kid do you have a crush on then?”

Sam opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, takes a big breath, and says, “Fine, its fucking Challa, okay? Are you two fucking happy?”

Bucky smirks but Steve at least looks genuinely pleased. “That’s great, Sam. I know you haven’t really been interested in dating since you came home. And Challa is super cool.”

“Yeah and a child,” Sam says.

“He’s four years younger than you. And you’re both in college. Stop being so dramatic,” Steve says.

Sam snorts because Steve Rogers calling anyone dramatic is pretty fucking rich.

“Well, he’s leaving,” Sam continues. “He’s only here till the end of the school year. It’s not like it can go anywhere.”

“Okay, that’s a more legit concern,” Steve agrees. “But you could have a few good months before he leaves if you wanted.”

“And maybe I almost kissed him in the library today and he fucking bolted like I terrified him. Which I probably did. Because it was out of the blue and he’s younger than me and he’s leaving anyway and he doesn’t even like me and he probably doesn’t even like dudes. How did I fuck this up so thoroughly?”

The Barnes-Rogerses just kinda blink at him for a couple long seconds.

“Fuck,” says Bucky.

“Damn,” says Steve.

“I’m ordering a pizza.” Bucky wiggles his phone out of his pocket, quite the feat with Steve squished in next to him. “You shouldn’t have to cook your own comfort food and we’re shit at it.”

“I can make macaroni and cheese,” Steve says. “Outta the box, but still. Pizza or macaroni, Sam?”

Sam takes a deep breath, suddenly so relieved to have the pair of them as roommates, obnoxiously married white boys they might be. This time last year, he would’ve been alone in his dank apartment, probably skipping dinner because he doesn’t like cooking just for himself and talking to a person on the phone to order anything was too much work. 

He might’ve made a total ass out of himself today, but at least he’s still got his friends. Still got his life. Still got Steve and Bucky using food to cheer him up because that’s how he usually goes about cheering them up, even if they suck at it.

“Both,” Sam decides. “I want both.”

* * *

 

The comfort food is good. They drink a few more beers and watch a couple superhero movies. When Steve gently tries to get Sam to talk about Challa, he doesn’t push when Sam just shakes his head.

But then Sam is alone in bed, staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep.

He’s got Wheatley’s class first thing in the morning. It might be one of his favorites, but maybe he’ll skip it. Going without Challa is too horrible to contemplate.

Sam was pretty decent at the whole flirting/dating/romance thing in high school. He even had a girlfriend for a year and a half during his third year in the Air Force. Figuring out when he forgot how to do this, and how he could possibly be so disconnected from his own feelings for Challa for so long, could fill up hours of therapy sessions. Sam is at least self aware enough now to admit he’s been crushing on Challa for awhile, maybe from the first moment Sam caught sight of him reading a book while waiting in the bathroom line at a bar.

Sam’s had a thing for Challa for awhile, but the worst part is that Sam was pretty damn sure for one moment there that Challa liked him back. The rejection was embarrassing. Sam got it so wrong. He misread the signs, thought all the time spent together and the long talks meant more than they did.

It’s still hard to believe he misinterpreted that New Years kiss, though.

Sighing into the dark, Sam closes his eyes, determined to fall asleep. He needs to be well rested to get through Wheatley’s class without Challa.

He’s made no progress towards sleep when his phone starts buzzing on his nightstand a few minutes later. Challa’s name lights up the screen and no one else calls Sam so late, but it’s still a surprise, given the circumstances.

Sam takes three deep breaths, answers the call, and says, “Hey, man.”

“Let me inside,” Challa says. “Please.”

Sam frowns and leans over to turn on a light. “What? Are you at my building?”

“No,” mutters Challa.

“No?”

“I am less than a block from your building.”

“It’s nearly midnight and you just decided to walk all the way to the other side of campus to get to my building?”

“I can walk slower if you need a few extra minutes to prepare to have a guest.”

“Challa.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he confesses in a rush, like he was really hoping he wouldn’t have to explain. “So I walked. I did not know where my feet were taking me until I arrived here.”

Sam sighs and very much wishes he had even a shred of self preservation. “I don’t know, man,” he says, giving it one last shot.

“Sam,” Challa says, and fuck. Sam always gets shivery when he hears his name spoken with that deep voice, in that rolling accent. “I would very much like to talk to you. If you’d rather not see me tonight, I understand, but please. Can we discuss it tomorrow? After history class?”

Somehow Challa’s willingness to just turn right around, and the casual way he confirms that he won’t be avoiding Sam in the morning, makes Sam’s decision for him.

“Come up.”

* * *

 

He smuggles Challa into his room, shutting the door behind him carefully as he attempts to keep from waking the Barnes-Rogerses. Sam would feel self conscious about his ratty sweatpants and threadbare Air Force t-shirt, but Challa slips out of his coat, tossing it on Sam’s desk chair to reveal a very similar getup. Challa’s sweatpants and t-shirt are all black, as per the usual.

“Hey,” Sam says. He crosses his arms over his chest because he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. It’s awkward, and Challa’s got to be feeling it too, but he appears as calm, cool, and collected as he always does, turning in a slow circle as he surveys Sam’s room.

It’s gotta look pretty damn bleak, compared to the mansion on O Street where Challa’s living.

“Come on, man,” Sam finally says, groaning as Challa crouches down to read the book titles on the bottom of row of his bookcase. “It’s late and I’m tired.”

“Yes, yes,” Challa says, standing. Like everything he does, the move is elegant and smooth, but he’s frowning when he faces Sam. “I apologize. This was very rude.”

“It’s fine,” Sam says, because it is. Even in the middle of the night, after humiliating himself in the library not twelve hours ago and remembering what liking someone feels like for the first time since Riley, Sam would always rather be with Challa than without him. Getting through a thousand pages of reading or living in the library or subsisting on that particularly brutal combination of caffeine and terror during finals, it’s all just better when Challa is around.

It doesn’t look like Challa is going to spit out whatever the hell he has to say, so Sam sighs and breaks the silence. “Do you want to just crash here tonight?”

“Crash?” Challa asks, blinking rapidly. It’s a rare thing, but every once and awhile they happen upon some weird American slang he hasn’t heard before and Sam even finds his confusion endearing.

“Do you want to stay here tonight?” Sam asks. “The couch is pretty comfortable actually.”

“The couch,” Challa repeats.

“Look, I would say you could share my bed but after I was a presumptuous ass in the library today, I thought I’d just skip that offer. And I sure as shit won’t be taking the couch. I’m older than you and my knee is fucked.”

Challa narrows his eyes and stares at Sam. “And this is the only reason you do not wish to share a bed with me? Because I ran away like a coward today?”

“Uh,” says Sam. “Sure, man. If that’s how you see it.”

Nodding, Challa moves towards Sam’s bed, setting his phone besides Sam’s on the bedside table and crawling under Sam’s covers. Sam gapes as Challa reaches up to turn off the light, and then keeps right on staring in the dark for another few seconds before Challa sighs. 

“Join me,” he says.

And Sam falls all over himself to comply.

In the dark, Challa rolls to face him. Getting comfortable on his side, Sam squints, wishing a light was still on so he could see Challa’s face. 

“I am leaving,” Challa murmurs and Sam was just starting to calm down, to tell himself that this isn’t so weird and that he didn’t ruin things forever with Challa earlier today. Now his heart starts racing in his chest again.

“Make up your mind, man.” Sam tries to turn his back on Challa, but Challa’s too quick, grabbing Sam’s shoulder to keep him there. His fingertips graze Sam’s neck, his skin rougher than Sam thought it would be and his thumb calloused.

“No, not tonight. I mean, I am leaving in the future. At the end of this semester, I am going back home. I am leaving.”

“Yeah,” Sam whispers. He doesn’t like thinking about it.

“This is why I ran from you this afternoon.” In the dark, Challa seems to have an easier time getting it all out, his words flowing easily now just like they do when he disagrees with Wheatley in class or tells Sam about Wakanda. “I am leaving, and when I arrived in this country I thought I would be counting the days until I could go home. But with you, it is the opposite, and I thought it would be worse, if I kissed you.”

“Yeah?” Sam sounds smug and self satisfied even to his own ears, and he’d like a redo on that reaction, but Challa just huffs out a quiet laugh, moving his hand up Sam’s neck to rest on his jaw.

“Yes,” Challa says. “But now, I think, I won’t like leaving you either way, so why not kiss you?”

Sam’s heart is racing again. All he can hear is his own breathing, but in the dark, in his bed, with Challa’s surprisingly rough hand on his neck, there is no panic or doubt or fear, or any of the things that have been chasing Sam since that terrible moment in the library. Hell, that have been chasing him a whole lot longer than that.

Sam lets out a big breath, relaxing further into his pillow and pressing closer to Challa. “Yeah. Why not kiss me?”

It’s so dark, Challa misses on his first try, grazing the corner of Sam’s mouth like it’s New Years all over again. He laughs, his voice light and tinkling, brushes his nose against Sam’s, and then finds his lips.

The kiss is sweeter than Sam expected, easy and relaxed in a way first kisses usually are not. And different from what a kiss today in the library today would’ve been, with all that sexual tension buzzing between them. 

Sam doesn’t think he’s ever been kissed so joyfully. Challa keeps smiling, lips quirking up every few seconds. It’s dreamy, Sam losing track of time, the safe little bubble in the dark with Challa even safer now that’s he’s got his mouth on him.

Eventually, Sam’s both fighting off a yawn and considering pushing Challa onto his back, settling between his legs and finally getting acquainted with Challa’s collarbones, the ones that have been tormenting him since Halloween. Challa pulls away a moment later, and Sam would protest vigorously, but that yawn is finally happening.

“Sleep now,” Challa decides, pressing a final kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth when he’ done yawning. “You’re exhausted.”

Again, Sam would argue, but he’s yawning some more. Instead he shuffles around in bed, trying to get his knee comfortable, and somehow Challa ends up pressed up against Sam’s back, his forehead resting against Sam’s shoulder, and arm snaked around Sam’s ribs, hand curled against Sam’s chest.

“Sleep,” Challa murmurs.

And Sam does.

* * *

 

When Sam opens his eyes in the morning, its 0630. That’s unfathomably early by most college kids’ standards, but Sam’s beams at his clock, proud of himself. After years of being up by 0500, this feels decadent, like sleeping in past noon on a Tuesday.

Challa, deeply asleep and huffing out breaths behind him, might have something to do with it. 

Sam lies there for awhile. He forgot what it was like to wake up with someone like this, to start the day next to someone else.

Challa’s got to be a nightmare in the mornings. Sam’s gleefully excited to see it.

Sam gives himself a whole hour, just listening to Challa breathe and dozing. When he gets out to bed, he’s careful not to disturb Challa. Sam bites back a laugh when he lets out a miserably little mewl as Sam stands, but he settles right back down when Sam pulls the comforter up to his chin.

Now that he’s up, it's very obvious that he was awake well past his usual bedtime last night, and Sam going to need all the caffeine in the apartment to get through the day.

The Barnes-Rogerses are already up. Steve’s sprawled out on the living room floor, stretching before his morning run. Bucky made the truly freshmen mistake this semester of signing up for an 8 am class, so he’s sitting on a stool at the counter, looking like he hates everything about his life. Except maybe his husband’s ass, which he’s still managing to perv on even mid pout.

“Boys,” Sam says in greeting. He knows he’s smiling way too broadly given that he’s had exactly no cups of coffee, but he can’t help it. Challa makes huffy little sounds in his sleep. Sam knows this now, and he might never stop smiling ever again.

Well, at least until Challa leaves.

“Wow,” Steve says as Sam steps over him on his way to the coffee machine. “You’re in a surprisingly good mood.”

“Yeah, did you forget how you completely embarrassed yourself with the guy you like yesterday?” Bucky asks. “Because you did.”

Sam shakes his head, pours himself a cup of coffee, and ignores Bucky completely when he sticks out his mug for a refill.

“Seriously, though.” Steve gets up, stretches one arm across his chest and holds it there as he comes to stand by Bucky. “This is kinda a stunning turn around. You’re practically skipping, dude.”

Sam takes a sip of coffee, waggling his eyebrows at them over the rim of his mug.

“What does that face even mean?” Steve demands.

After the misery of last night, Sam’s having the time of his life tormenting the Barnes-Rogerses with his inexplicable happiness and just says, “It’s a brand new day, fellas.”

Bucky mean mugs him and Steve sighs. “What could’ve possibly happened in the last seven hours? Did Challa text you?”

Sam shrugs. “Something like that.”

Challa picks this moment to stumble out of the bedroom, blinking at the sunlight pouring through the window. He surveys the living room like he’s never seen this apartment before in this life, like he’s never seen a couch or a TV or a rug, like he doesn’t even know his own name. He’s wearing one of Sam’s old CCNY hoodies, and he’s got the hood up but even that’s not enough to protect him from this very terrifying thing called the world before 8 am.

Sam snorts into his coffee, freshly awoken Challa proving just as ridiculous as Sam imagined him to be. The shocked expressions of the Barnes-Rogerses as they glance back and forth between Sam and Challa is just icing on a particularly tasty cake.

Challa freezes when he notices everyone watching, and he straightens, lifting his chin and pulling on that cloak of dignity and grace like he does from time to time. It’s damn difficult to be haughty in a hoodie, but Challa manages. He clasps his hands behind his back, bows his head at Steve and Bucky, and says, “Mr. Barnes, Mr. Rogers, good morning,” before strolling over to the bathroom.

“Well,” says Bucky after a few beats of silence. “That’ll do it.”

* * *

 

Challa crawls back into bed and sleeps for another forty-five minute before Sam bribes him with breakfast to get him up for real. Even a little grumpy and sleep rumpled, Challa approves of spicy grits with shrimp. He eats way too fast, and then rests his head on Sam’s shoulder while Sam finishes his meal at a much more reasonable pace.

“I’ve got to get to campus,” Sam murmurs, lips moving against Challa’s temple.

Challa mutters under his breath, but heaves himself up to get ready for the day anyway.

Back in the bedroom, Challa’s phone starts freaking out, buzzing incessantly until Challa finally looks at it. He spits out curses in what Sam’s assumes is Wahili, and types back furiously.

“Everything ok?” Sam asks, pulling out clothes.

“Yes.” Challa sighs and drops his phone on the bed. He looks ready to crawl back into under the covers, but Sam catches his elbow, sure that if Challa goes down again Sam will have no shot at getting him back up before noon. “Ayo and Okoye feel as though I should’ve told them of my whereabouts. And not gone off walking alone in the middle of the night. And not slept so far from them.”

“Wow.” Sam shakes his head and chuckles. “They sure do keep you on a short leash huh?”

“Well,” says Challa, grinning. “I am merely a traveller in a dangerous, foreign land. Do you have any idea how horrified the rest of the world is at your gun violence? Everyone back home believes I will be shot at least once in my time here.”

“Good point,” Sam says, sliding his fingers down Challa’s forearm to grasp his hand. “Let’s try and avoid that, okay? Getting shot hurts like hell.”

For a moment, Challa looks truly sticken and Sam wants to take it back, but then Challa squeezes his hand, kisses his cheek, and says, “If you wish for me to walk you to campus this hideously early in the morning, then I require real pants.”

Sam provides pants, a pair of jeans that are slightly too long on him. They are about the same size, Challa a couple inches taller, with lankier limbs and more defined muscles. The jeans fit him well, and he looks so good that Sam considers just skipping his third day of school altogether in favor of getting Challa back into bed.

Challa smirks at him like he can tell what Sam’s thinking, and then drags him out of the apartment. 

They’re leaving early enough that they don’t need to rush the walk to campus. Sam might be more relaxed than he was as a freshman, but he still hates to be late, especially this early in the semester before he can be sure he’s sufficiently impressed his professors.

“What classes do you have today?” Challa asks, bumping into Sam as they walk.

“Just Wheatley this morning,” Sam replies. “And Intro to Black American Lit this afternoon. I’m taking that with America.”

Challa groans. “I am so jealous of you I might die.”

“Yeah?” Sam says, glancing at Challa. The classes he was actually enrolled in last semester sounded like the stuff of nightmares, all Foreign Policy Decision Making this and US Grand Strategy that. He apparently got kicked out of something called Africa Declassified for arguing with the professor after a week and had to replace it with Introduction to Intelligence. 

“Domestic Policies and International Relations.” Challa pulls a face. “Authoritarianism & Democratization, and then Advanced Theories of International Security.”

“Damn.”

“Yes, my course load this semester is a thing of beauty, is it not?”

“Sounds depressing.”

Challa laughs. “Ah yes, there’s nothing at all depressing about all those history courses you take.”

“At least I’m interested in all that depressing ass history,” Sam replies. “You don’t seem to like political science, like, at all.”

“I do not.”

“Then why take it?”

This is far from the first time Sam’s asked, but he’s never going to be done trying to figure out just what the hell Challa is hoping to get out of his year here.

“It will be important for my future,” Challa says, very carefully. “To understand how The United States views these things. It is not just the content, but how it is taught, and the underlying assumptions presented. And from that perspective, all these classes are interesting. But much of the content I find rather simple.”

“Okay, Dr. Had-A-Physics-Phd-at-Twenty.”

“I was nineteen, actually,” Challa replies, smirking.

“Well, la-di fucking da.” Sam moves to elbow Challa in the side, but he dodges easily, giggling into the palms of his hands. Ducking and twirling and graceful as anything, he avoids Sam for a few more seconds before he comes closer, tucking himself into Sam’s side and wrapping an arm around Sam’s waist. 

Sam blinks at him and carefully draps his own arm across the breadth of Challa’s shoulders.

“I can suffer through one more semester of this blood boiling drivel,” Challa says. “So long as I can sneak into your history classes.”

“Yeah,” Sam murmurs, but his brain gets stuck on  _ one more semester. _

They walk through campus in silence for a few minutes, Sam deep in his head and holding onto Challa’s shoulder too tightly.

“We should talk about it in more detail,” Challa murmurs. “I am not here for much longer. And I have no intention of coming back. Perhaps to visit, but not frequently. I have responsibilities awaiting me in Wakanda, a fair few of them that will prevent me from leaving very often.”

They turn right on 22nd, moving towards Gelman, and Sam catches sight of Ayo and Okoye, looking far from pleased as they wait out front of the library.

Against him, Sam can feel Challa sigh, but he makes no move to separate them, just squeezes Sam’s waist.

“We will talk later.” Challa whispers in his ear as they pause on the corner. “I will come over tonight. My last class ends at 6.”

“Sure,” Sam says. “I’m making dinner.”

Gasping theatrically, Challa clutches his chest and gapes up at Sam. “You? Make dinner? How unusual!”

“Oh, I see how it is.” Sam shakes Challa by the shoulders. “You think you’re funny, huh? You think you’re so fucking funny.”

Challa beams, kisses him, and takes off across the street without even bothering to look both ways, walking backwards so he can keep on grinning at Sam. “Tonight!” he says, in the middle of the intersection. 

Laughing, Sam nods and shoos him until he’s safe on the other side of the street. Or safe from oncoming traffic, at least. Okoye is already giving him quite the lecture, her rapid and scolding Wahili audible across the street, while Ayo glares on in stoney silence.

Sam flees towards his class, before that glare can be pointed in his direction.

* * *

 

They do talk about it. After dinner and homework and Mario Kart, sitting facing each other on Sam’s bed with their legs crossed and their knees touching. They say things like, “I really like you,” and, “I really like you, too.” And then they say, “ _ But _ .”

Challa is good at this, clearly and explicitly stating what he wants and what their relationship will look like going forward. It’s all very logical, and Sam might find it cold, but Challa doesn’t seem particularly happy with the necessary end date on this thing between them. He frowns and says, “I am sorry,” and says, “I will miss you when I leave.”

And Sam says, “Don’t apologize,” and, “I’m not really down with the long distance thing anyway,” and, “It’ll be one hell of a semester.”

Phrases like, “We’ll keep it casual,” and, “Let’s just have fun,” and “Enjoy it while we can,” get thrown around. Then Challa pulls off his sweater, bites Sam’s lower lip, and laughs as Sam shoves him back against the mattress.

Sam finally gets his mouth on those collarbones, gets Challa naked in his bed, gets between his legs, and there is no more talking at all.

Sam knows better than anyone that nothing is permanent. Fathers get shot on the street and best friends get blown out of the sky. People leave and nothing lasts. Sam is used to saying goodbye, and this time it won’t be a surprise. He’s got plenty of warning, and a whole semester to get as much as Challa as he can before it ends, like all things do.

* * *

 

Casual was what they agreed to, but it never really happens.

Challa spends most of his nights at Sam’s apartment, seeming to prefer it to the overly fancy and stuffy mansion on O Street. They see each other between classes on campus and kiss goodbye when they part. Sam’s teaches Challa how to cook and gets a crash course in Wahili in return.

The first week they only manage to spend two nights apart. The next week they are down to one, and it takes another before Sam realizes they’ve fallen into an easy routine, with no nights apart and approximately ninety-seven black sweaters folded neatly in his closet.

Challa starts coming with Sam to QPOC meetings and Sam gets invited on regular outings with Ayo and Okoye to explore the city.

Challa bonds with America over books, sharing her love for Gabriel García Márquez, Jennine Capó Crucet, and Pablo Neruda, in the original Spanish. He can talk art with Steve for hours and teaches Bucky some elaborate card game that mostly seems to involve the pair of them staring each other down with the coffee table between them, with occasional outbursts of glee or groans of defeat.

A couple times a week, they have big group dinners with whoever is free, the apartment crammed full of people, all laughing and happy. Challa always seems to be at the center of it, with his uncanny ability to talk intelligently on any given subject and the way he always figures out the thing someone is passionate about, matching their enthusiasm and really listening as they talk. Still, he always returns to Sam, attempting to help cook while stealing food before its ready. 

He kisses Sam in front of everyone and at the end of the night, he walks Ayo and Okoye to the door, murmuring placating words to them in Wahili as they frown at him. They keep on frowning, even as they hug him goodnight, but Challa always stays with Sam despite their disapproval.

Sam’s life is bigger this semester. Last year, his world was confined to campus and his dreary apartment. It expanded slightly, when he started hanging out with Steve and Bucky, and then got bigger still at the beginning of the year with the addition of America and the QPOC kids.  With Challa, Sam’s life finally feels like it’s the right size, big and full and bright.

And Sam can see his own heart break coming a mile away. Whispering  _ casual, casual, casual _ to himself - when Challa smiles at him in the morning or rubs his sore knee at night or kisses him between classes - does not help.

* * *

 

“I don’t know,” Sam says, glancing over his shoulder at Challa, face down in Sam’s pillow and huffing out sleepy breaths. 

“What don’t you know?” his ma says into his ear, sounding genuinely baffled. “You don’t want to cook us dinner? You always want to cook us dinner.”

“Yeah, I know. But that night might be kinda tough.”

From the other end of the phone, there is just silence coming from his ma.

Challa and Sam might spend every spare moment together, but in theory they are keeping it casual and that certainly should not include introducing Challa to Sam’s mother, sister, and nieces so soon. Or at all.

Jamie’s got an overnight field trip to the capitol next week. Sarah is chaperoning, and the two of them are going to stay a couple extra nights, with Ma and Jody joining them for the weekend to see Sam and his campus and the apartment. 

They are all just itching to see the piece of shit apartment, for reasons that Sam can’t even begin to pretend to understand. 

To keep Challa from meeting his family, Sam will need to say, “ _ Sorry, Challa, can’t hang out for the first time since we got together because my family is in town _ ,” and that just doesn’t sit right, either.

“It’s just a lot of people in our tiny apartment,” Sam says.

“There are three of you and four of us,” Ma replies. “And Jody is so tiny she hardly counts as a full sized person. Didn’t you have at least six people there for Thanksgiving? What’s the difference?”

“Nothing.” Sam sighs and watches Challa burrow a little deeper into the pillows. “No difference. Dinner Friday is great. And then we can wander around campus Saturday, maybe check out a museum the girls haven’t been too.”

“They haven’t been to the new African American museum yet.”

Sam winces. “It’s still so crowded you’ve got to get timed passes. And they’re probably all out for this weekend, but I’ll look into it.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Ma, I’ve got a class.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll let you go. I love you.”

“Yeah, love you, too.” 

In his bed, Challa lifts his head, opens one eye, and smiles at Sam. Smiling back is compulsory. He’s got no control over his face, when Challa’s looking at him like that, and even less control over the stutter-step beat of his heart.

“Oh, and, um.” Sam speaks in a rush, before she can hang up. “Challa might be at dinner?”

Challa blinks at him and then collapses back into the pillows. Sam bites his lip to keep from laughing at Challa’s inability to be a person in the mornings and tries to ignore the knowing silence coming through his phone.

“Challa,” his ma repeats.

“Yup.”

“Your  _ friend _ from Wakanda.”

“That’s the one,” Sam says, resigned to his fate. Despite telling her most things - the details of his classes, the food he’s cooking, America’s latest literary obsession, whatever dumb married thing Steve and Bucky are up to these days - he has yet to tell her about Challa. She doesn’t appreciate words like  _ casual _ and  _ just having fun  _ and  _ expiration date _ , when it comes to relationships, but she’s going to know something is up the second she sees them together.

It’s gonna be a whole conversation, one that Sam’s been putting off.

But he can’t just not invite Challa to dinner on Friday.

“Alright,” Ma says, like she already knows. Which she probably does. “And he can come with us, for whatever we do for the rest of the weekend, too.”

“Great. Hey, I’ve really got to go.”

So he says his goodbyes, hangs up the phone, and crawls into bed with Challa, resting his forehead against the back of Challa’s neck.

“You’re wearing my sweater,” Challa grumbles.

“It’s a good sweater.”

“Hmm. I find the fact that you are dressed at all more objectionable than your thievery.”

Sam laughs and smacks a wet kiss against Challa’s neck. He gets an elbow in his ribs for his efforts, and they wrestle around for a few seconds, completely wrecking Sam’s sheets, until Sam ends up pinned to the mattress, with a very naked Challa laid out over him.

“I’m beginning to regret this whole clothes thing, too,” Sam admits.

Smirking, Challa leans down to kiss him. Sam would gladly settle in for some making out, even if he’s got to run to campus to make it to class on time, but Challa keeps it light and easy. Far too soon, he rolls off Sam, pats his ribs, and disappears into Sam’s closet.

“Are you walking me to class?” Sam calls after him. Challa gets his ass out of bed sooner than he needs to on a  pretty regularly these days, for just this reason.

“Why else would I be up at the break of day?” Challa emerges from the closet, pulling yet another black sweater over his head. “Who might I be attending dinner with on Friday?”

“Oh, yeah, about that.” Sam sits up and wipes his suddenly damp palms on his sheets. “So, my family’s gonna be here for the weekend. My mom, Sarah, and the girls.”

“Jamie and Jody,” Challa says. “Ages eight and three-quarters, and six.”

Sam’s not so nervous now that he can’t manage a smile. “You got it.”

“I should bring them gifts!” Challa declares, skipping the whole step where Sam actually invites him. Prowling around the room, he wrings his hands with a disturbing amount of energy for this early in the morning. “What do they like? Who is Jamie’s favorite baseball player? And Jody likes art? Correct? I have a small piece of my mother’s I could give her. Is six to young to start learning to woodwork? Because woodworking is something of a Wakandan tradition.”

Sam blinks at him. He’d feel like a real asshole about his own inability to be casual about Challa, if Challa managed to be even a little bit chill about their relationship.

“Whoa,” says Sam, snagging Challa by the belt loop as he makes a pass along the route he’s been pacing. He pulls Challa to stand between his knees, clutching Challa’s hips and forcing himself not to be distracted by all of Challa’s beautiful skin. “Whoa, whoa. They do not need gifts. My ma is gonna think you’re trying to marry me or something, if you get them all gifts. It’s just dinner, Challa.”

Challa stills. He stares at Sam with wide eyes for a painful second before dropping his gaze to their feet. “I apologize. I now realize my behavior has been inappropriate. In fact, you did not actually even invite me to dinner, and here I am, acting like a fool. I will not come, if you would be more comfortable.”

“What!” Sam’s reeling from how quickly this morning has gotten all turned around on him. “No, that’s not it at all. Of course you’re invited. Of course I want you to meet my family, if you want to meet them.”

Challa nods, but keeps look at his feet. Something about this slumped, defeated posture on Challa is unnatural, and Sam hates it.

“It’s great, that you want to meet them,” Sam says, rubbing his thumbs in the dimples on Challa’s lower back. “It’s awesome that you know so much about the girls, that you really listen when I talk about them and remember this stuff. But this is just dinner, okay? It’s gotta be chill.”

“Ah,” says Challa, grinning ruefully. “Chill. Yes, of course. It must be chill.  _ Casual _ , even.”

He says it like he’s reminding himself and Sam’s stomach dips.

“Yup. Right. Yes.”

Challa takes another deep breath and when he looks at Sam he’s actually smiling. “Let’s get you to class, shall we?”

* * *

 

Thursday morning, Challa finds Sam at a sunlit table on the first floor of Gelmen where he’s sitting across from America, reading her paper on  _ Their Eyes were Watching God  _ while America reads his. They are due this afternoon, and Sam doesn’t really have time to be distracted by Challa. He beams up at him anyway.

“Hey!” he says, craning his neck up for a kiss as America shoots them a look, making a big scene about turning the volume up on her headphones to drown them out. She’s been talking about rewriting her whole intro paragraph and tweaking the rest of her paper to match, even if Sam told her it’s good as is, so she needs every minute between now and class.

Challa drops a quick kiss to his mouth and smiles.

“Don’t you have class in, like, ten minutes?” Sam asks.

“Yes,” Challa says, sighing like it’s the worst thing to happen to anyone anywhere. “But I wanted to tell you. We are taking your family to the Museum of African American History and Culture.”

“What?” Sam frowns up at him. “When I looked they didn’t have any more passes left for this weekend.”

“I managed to secure admission.”

“Yeah? When are we going?”

“Saturday at six in the evening.”

Sam tilts his head to the side at looks at Challa. “That’s a little late. I thought they closed at five.”

“Five-thirty,” Challa says, nodding. “This is a special tour taking place after hours.”

“A special tour,” Sam repeats.

“Led by Lonnie Bunch.”

“Who the hell is Lonnie Bunch?”  

Challa clears his throat and looks faintly uncomfortable, glancing around like he’s searching for something to get him out of this conversation. From across the table, America slowly pulls down her massive headphones, looping them around her neck as she stares at Challa. He’s acting weird enough for her to spare a few precious seconds watching him, apparently. 

“He is founding director of the museum,” Challa admits, raising his chin and squaring his shoulders, looking down his nose at Sam and daring him to ask any more questions.

Sam blinks at him. Blinks at America across the table only to find her blinking back, her mouth hanging open a little, so yeah, Sam probably heard Challa right.

“The founding director,” Sam repeats, slowly. “And this after hours tour with him, it’s a whole big group or something?”

“Yes, of course.”

Challa looks everywhere but at Sam.

“Who’s in the group?”

“Well, you and your family, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And me. I was planning to invite Ayo and Okoye.” Challa stops talking and starts backing away slowly. “But I would leave that to your discretion.”

“And that’s it?” Sam sputters.

“And that would be all.” Challa looks at his bare wrist, eyes going comically wide with mock shock as he pretends to check a watch. “Will you just look at the time! Where has the day gone? I really must be going, wouldn’t want to be late. I’ll see you tonight, Sam. Goodbye, America.”

Challa turns on his heel and strides towards the library, leaving Sam and America with nothing to do but blink at each other.

“What the fuck,” whispers Sam.

“Who the hell is this kid?” America demands, giving voice to the question Sam’s been asking himself at least five times a day since Halloween.

* * *

 

He nearly makes it through a perfect weekend before his mother corners him. 

The girls are immediately charmed by Challa’s good humor and willingness to let them teach him how to play dominoes. When Sarah him about the latest engineering project she’s supervising, Challa actually understands what the hell she’s talking about. Sam’s ma looks wary for all of five minutes, until Challa says something hopelessly earnest and endearing about Sam teaching him to cook. He listens avidly to her talk how Sam used to hang out with his father in their tiny kitchen in Harlem, watching him cook, and then wins her over further when he laments all the ethnic studies classes he wishes he could sit in on but can’t due to his schedule.

There’s a terse moment on the way to the museum Saturday, with his ma quizzing Challa, trying to figure out who he’s related to or what connections he might have on The Hill to swing a last minute after hours tour with the founding director of the very new and very popular African American Museum of History and Culture. 

But Challa just walks on stoically, saying no to all her guesses and giving her vague nonsense answers to her questions, until Ayo and Okoye intercept her in what looks like a coordinated maneuver, putting sidewalk between them and Challa as they ask his ma the courses she’s teaching this semester. 

Sam sighs, wraps an arm around Challa’s waist, and doesn’t really know what to do with his urge to protect Challa from his own mother, especially when she’s asking questions Sam’s dying to get the answers to himself.

It’s a good weekend, with all of Sam’s favorite people right there with him. And he’s so  distracted by his own happiness, he somehow lets his ma get him alone in his bedroom, right before they’re about to hit the road Sunday afternoon.

He’s rummaging around on his desk, looking for a book he wanted to show her, completely unaware that behind him, Ma is leaning back against his closed bedroom door, effectively trapping him.

“So,” she says, when Sam turns around, book in hand, effectively out flanking and out maneuvering him.

“Aw, Ma. Come on.” Sam throws head back and groans at the ceiling.

“I like him.”

“Well, good.”

“What’s not to like? Smart, funny, respectful. Good with my grandkids, spends most of his time smiling adoringly at my son.”

“Ma.” Sam closes his eyes, cheeks burning.

“I like him.”

“But?”

“But he’s leaving.”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, he is.”

“So what then?”

“So he’ll go back to Wakanda and that will be that.”

“Oh, Sam,” she whispers and Sam hates it. 

She whispered his name in that same quite way on his tenth birthday, when she caught him curled up in his father’s favorite easy chair in the middle of the night, wrapped up in his father’s Air Force hoodie, still believing with some tiny part of his hopeful, childish heart that his father would walk through that door.

She said Oh, Sam, when he drunkenly told her about his crush on his best friend before he and Riley shipped out for that last time and then again when he came home, best friend dead and knee shattered.

She said it when he burned one of the first meals he tried to make for her and then cried about it, and when he was so painfully uncomfortable around the girls during those first couple years of civilian life.

And she’s saying it now.

“I’ll be okay,” he promises, crossing his arms over his chest and willing it to be true.

“You really like him.”

“Yeah, I really do. And it’s gonna suck when he leaves, but I’ll get through it. I’ve gotten through worse, right? I’ll survive. I always do.”

She looks like she wants to say, _ Oh, Sam _ , again, but instead she just pushes off against the door and crosses the room, wrapping him in one of those hugs that never fail to make him feel small and safe. She’s a tiny little thing, delicate, and Sam’s been looming over her since middle school, but she hugs him and he’s a kid again, with no hurt too big for his ma to fix.

“I know you’ll survive,” she murmurs, stroking his shoulder blades. “But I want so much more for you. I want you to live. I want you to thrive.”

Sam’s got nothing to say to that.

* * *

 

After his family leaves, in a prolonged whirlwind of  _ goodbyes _ and  _ I love yous _ and s _ ee you soons _ , everyone calls it an early night. Even Steve and Bucky seem tired after so much family time, after the apartment being so full all weekend, and they spent half as much time with Sam’s family. 

Wearing only his boxers under Sam’s comforter and yawning, Challa turns off the light just as Sam settles back against the pillows to do a little of the reading he didn’t get to this weekend.

“Challa--”

“Nope,” he says. That’s a word he picked up from Jamie over the course of the weekend. He even uses the same inflection Jamie does, drawing out the  _ No _ , the  _ P _ sharp and quick. “Now we sleep.”

“Fine. But you have to get up early with me tomorrow so I can get this done before Wheatley’s class.”

Challa groans and complains a fair amount, but never actually says no. Or nope, as he is now apt to do.

They shuffle around, until Sam settles in a position that works for his knee, sore from a weekend spend on his feet and wandering around DC. Laid out flat on his back feels good for now, so Sam tugs at Challa until he’s curled into Sam’s side.

“Hey,” Sam whispers.

“Hmm,” Challa huffs into his neck.

“Hey,” he says again, a little louder and poking at Challa’s shoulder.

“Hmm,” Challa huffs again, also a little louder and Sam rolls his eyes.

“I’m trying to say thank you here, if you want to stay awake for two more minutes.”

Challa’s breathing picks up, like he’s finally paying attention. He runs his hand down Sam’s chest, resting it on the little pudge of Sam’s stomach that he hasn’t had the time or inclination to get rid of since it appeared a year ago.

“Thank you,” Sam says. “For everything. You were great with the girls and Sarah and my ma, with her questions. And that museum. Holy hell, Challa, I have no idea how you pulled it off but it was amazing. Seriously, like the best three hours of my life.”

“Hmm.” Challa presses a kiss to Sam’s jaw and then lifts his head. “You are very welcome. And thank you, Sam. For including me. Your family made me miss mine a little less, this weekend, and I will cherish every memory.”

Sam kisses him and this has to be living. This has to be thriving. And he’s got no idea how he’s going to go back to just surviving, when he doesn’t have it anymore.

* * *

 

Challa prefers the cramped, dumpy apartment Sam shares with Steve and Bucky to the mansion on O Street. He claims the apartment feels like an actual home, lived in and well loved, while the mansion is basically a museum, filled to the brim with gaudy antiques and fussy decorations. 

He’s not wrong, but the many amenities the mansion offers far outweigh the stuffy decor, in Sam’s opinion. A private bathroom is a huge luxury after sharing one with the Barnes-Rogerses, but Challa’s shower is what dreams are made of. Sam is also deeply, passionately, irrevocably in love with the sleek, fully stocked kitchen.

If Challa had his way, they’d spend every night at Sam’s, but Okoye seems to get jittery when Challa doesn’t come home too many nights in a row. Sam usually manages to sweet talk Challa into weekends at the mansion at the very least, mostly because the things Sam can do to brunch in that kitchen are absolutely decadent.

“We’re going to be here a lot more when the weather gets warmer,” Sam says one Saturday, eyeing the back patio and the covered pool beyond. The the yard is bigger than Sam whole apartment, and finding a pretty, private, outdoor spot in the city is nearly impossible, so Challa needs to be mentally prepared for Sam doing all his studying for finals this year under the lush trees.

“Yes, when is that to happen?” Challa grumps, wrapping both his hands around his hot mug of coffee. “Everyday continues to be unbearably cold.”

“Dude, it hit sixty yesterday.”

“Sixty! Ha!” Challa barks out a laugh and then pulls the blanket he dragged with him to the table this morning over his head.

Sam rolls his eyes and eats his breakfast. He thinks about teasing Challa some more, but then Ayo and Okoye come in through the back door, breathing heavy and smiling at each other.

“There’s food,” Sam says. “Like, way too much food. This kitchen is a bad influence.”

“Oh, excellent,” Okoye says, dropping what appears to be a actual goddamn  _ machete  _ on the table before moving to the counter to fill a plate. “Thank you, Sam!”

Sam responds, but mostly just stares at the machete.

“We are training today,” Ayo says, poking Challa in the chest with a fat stick, about as long as the machete.

“Outside?” Challa asks.

“Where else?”

“In this weather?” Challa waves an arm towards the window, and they all take a second to look at the sun flooding the back yard with light, not even a hint of last night’s frost left clinging to the still-brown grass or a cloud in the bright blue sky. There’s even a song bird going to town in some corner of the yard, like it’s officially spring.

Ayo shrugs. “Wear an extra layer.”

“You know I prefer to train shirtless.”

“What.” Sam perks up, bite of French toast abandoned on his fork halfway to his mouth. “Shirtless?”

Ayo and Okoye laugh, but Challa bites his lip, pleased and embarrassed as he looks up at Sam from beneath his eyelashes for a few long seconds.

Standing abruptly from his seat at the end of the table, Challa drains his coffee mug in one go, scowls at Ayo, and says, “Thank you for breakfast, Sam. It was delicious as always.” He turns on his heel and stalks out of the room.

“Wait,” Sam says, blinking after him. “Training? Shirtless training?”

“You will see,” Ayo says, running a fingertip over the curve of the machete.

“No he won’t!” Challa yells from halfway up the stairs. “I will be wearing  _ layers _ .”

* * *

 

Training starts with Challa and Ayo facing off in the backyard with sticks taller than they are, gripping them on each end and holding them parallel to the ground before banging them together in a complicated and intricate rhythm.

“Usually they’d be using spears,” Okoye says, stretched out in the lounge chair next to Sam’s. Eyes hidden behind glamorous sunglasses, she sips on a mimosa as she watches the training. A wool blanket is thrown across her lap, because it’s not quite spring yet, despite the sunshine. “But they proved difficult to get through customs.”

Sam can never quite tell when she is joking or not. Although she’s good natured and cheerful, her dry sense of humor can border on morbid. 

“Huh,” says Sam. He’s got notes for his upcoming anthro test spread out on the wool blanket over his own lap, but the chances of him retaining anything are around zero. Even with Challa fully clothed in several long-sleeved layers under a basic black tunic, Sam is utterly fascinated and completely distracted.

Ayo and Challa go faster, like the tempo to the song only they can hear is speeding up and they are dancing along with it. They’re working together, anticipating each other's movements, even as Ayo strikes out suddenly and Challa ducks, trying to sweep out her legs. She jumps over the end of his stick quickly, and meets Challa back in rhythm when he pops up to start hitting his stick against hers again.

“What’s the goal here?” Sam asks.

“They’re merely warming up. Getting the blood flowing and the muscles loose.”

The move faster and faster, whirling, jumping, dodging. Challa’s light on his feet, graceful and quick, where Ayo has more raw power, each movement sure and strong. They seem to be building towards something, and occasionally attempt to smack each other, but that doesn’t seem like the point of this exercise.

So quick, Sam nearly misses it, Ayo gets her stick behind Challa’s feet, yanking it forward and bringing Challa down. He lands on his ass with a thump and a giggle, as Ayo pokes him hard in the chest.

“Whoa,” Sam says.

“Hmm,” Okoye replies, tipping her oversized sunglasses down her nose and studying the pair critically as Ayo pulls Challa to his feet. “You’re out of practice.”

“Ayo always beats me.” Challa brushes dirt off his ass, grinning like he knows he’s in trouble and he’s fully expecting to charm his way out of it.

“Not so quickly, usually,” Okoye replies.

It didn't seem quick to Sam. Both Challa and Ayo are breathing heavily, walking it off and passing a water bottle back and forth.

“I’ve been busy,” Challa replies.

“Yes,” Okoye drawls, turning to look at Sam. “I am aware.”

“Uh,” Sam says, still staring at Challa. There’s sweat sweat on his hair line, the sun shining on his face and doing amazing things for his already impressive angles of his cheeks. Sam didn’t really think he could want Challa any more than he does at any given moment on any given day, but Challa is so beautiful right now, his movements lithe and graceful, that just looking at him makes Sam want press him against the nearest wall, to feel that powerful body move against him.

Challa catches him looking and Sam stares back, the moment charged and heated between them. He licks his bottom lip and takes one step in Sam’s direction, but Ayo gets her stick in front of him. 

“Later,” she says, rolling her eyes. 

Sam’s anthro notes remain neglected in his lap for the duration of training and then get totally abandoned later - after hours of watching Challa spar with Ayo, practicing with the long sticks, the machete, a shield, Challa stipping off layers as the day warms until he’s shirtless, all glistening planes of muscle and long limbs - when he can finally drag Challa upstairs.

* * *

 

The nickname slips out on a Friday, one of those rare nights when America manages to drag them out to a gay bar with the other QPOC kids who can legally drink. The club is loud, but Sam’s drunk enough to agree to spend a couple minutes on the dancefloor. It’s not so bad, with Challa draped over his back, swaying with his eyes closed. He wraps his arms around Sam’s waist and leans over Sam’s shoulder to steal sips of Sam’s drink through a straw.

Just when the music and the crowd start to feel like too much for Sam, Challa takes his hand, leading him off the dance floor and outside to a patio in the back. They spot America in the corner, sitting alone on a stool by a fire pit. She’s smiling down at her phone and typing rapidly.

“Hey,” Sam says, dropping down into the seat beside her. “We’re probably going to take off soon.”

“I’m surprised you made it this long,” she says, still grinning at her phone. “I’m glad you came. Going out is fun every once and awhile, right? Even when you’re an old man.”

Sam laughs. “Who’re you talking to over there?”

“No one,” America says, the sing-song quality in her voice making it very obvious that it’s definitely someone.

“Could no one maybe be a certain Gender Studies major in our lit class possibly?” Sam asks, waggling his eyebrows.

America bites her lip, smile peeking out around the corners of her mouth. “ _ Maybe _ . Maybe you and Challa aren’t the only ones calling it a night early for better things at home.”

“Bout damn time,” Sam says, looking around to share this good news with Challa, only to find the seat next to him occupied by someone distinctly not-Challa. Sam glances around, spotting Challa where he’s standing behind Sam, hands deep in his pockets and eye glassy. Sam reaches out, grabbing his wrist and tugging him closer. “C’mere, Lala.”

Challa settles on Sam’s lap, his arm over Sam’s shoulders for balance, but he leans back, giving Sam a puzzled look.

“You are calling me this?” he asks “Lala?”

Sam blinks at him, for a few seconds, before he realizes that, yup, he did indeed just give Challa a nickname without thinking about it. “Yeah, you don’t like it?”

“I like it.” Challa kisses Sam’s temple and then laughs. “But a nickname for my nickname?”

“Challa isn’t your full name?” Now he’s the one leaning back so he can get a good look at Challa’s face.  “What’s your real name?” 

Wide-eyed and panicky, Challa opens his mouth and then closes it without saying anything, settling on shaking his head instead.

“Babe, what is it?” Sam bounces his leg, jousting Challa. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“I know yours.”

“It’s Samuel. Wow, shocking right? I’m glad I got that off my chest.”

“Sam.” Challa huffs and rolls his eyes. 

“It feels good to be honest. Really, you should try it.”

Challa shakes his head.

“Seriously, your turn,” Sam presses. “Spill.”

Even from his precarious position on Sam’s lap, Challa manages to straighten his shoulders, raise his chin, and look down his nose at Sam, infuriatingly haughty and borderline arrogant, and Sam knows that he’s not getting anything out of Challa. It’s like Nelson Mandela all over again.

“It’s not a nickname,” he insists. “Challa is my name. Challa N’Yami. That is all.”

“You just said--”

“Oh, it must have gotten lost in translation.” Challa forces a laugh. He’s better at wriggling out of telling Sam stuff when he hasn’t been drinking. “I am not a native English speaker, you know. These things can be so difficult when you are not fluent in the language.”

“Challa.” Sam takes a deep breath. “Are you really trying to suddenly pretend like you don’t speak English better than I do?”

“What was that? I didn’t catch it. You spoke too quickly.”

With one less drink in his system, Sam would let it go, but Challa’s absurd cover story is making him want to know that much more, so he pushes. “Challa.  _ Babe _ . Come on. Just tell me. What’s your name?”

It is not a surprise when Challa stands abruptly, ready to prowl away from a conversation he doesn’t want to have. “I’m suddenly in dire need of a drink,” he says, turning and working his way through the crowd, back inside.

“Wow,” says America. “You guys always have the weirdest drama.”

When Sam loses sight of Challa, he turns to America. “Did he really just try to convince me that he can’t speak English to avoid telling me his real name?”

She shrugs, sips her drink, and says, “No hablo ingles.”

Sam flicks a gum wrapper at her. It smacks her right in the forehead.

* * *

 

For spring break, they go to Charlottesville. His ma is thrilled to have such a full house, even if it means that Sam’s relegated to sleeping on the pull out couch in the basement so the “real guests” can have the actual bedrooms upstairs. Although he can understand giving up his room for Ayo and Okoye, he argues that Steve and Bucky stopped being real guests when they started coming to all the family holidays, but his ma will not be swayed.

Challa calls the pull out a delightful invention, opening up the mattress and pushing it back in several times, but then he lies down on the thing and loses all enthusiasm.

“Oh no,” he says, wiggling around, trying to get comfortable.

“Yup, that’s about eight springs you feel poking your back.” Sam sighs and lies down next to him, so they are shoulder to shoulder. “I told you so.” 

“I suppose you can’t have it all,” Challa muses. “The couch part was comfortable so the bed part is not.”

“Sarah offered us her guest room, but the girls get up early and they think they’re being quiet in the mornings but they are really fucking not.”

“Hmm.” Challa’s brow furrows as he thinks, weighing the pros and cons of a bad mattress verse an early morning. “This bed will do,” he decides.

“Cool.” Sam sighs, flopping over so he can sprawl out on top of Challa, snuggling into his chest until he finds a comfortable spot to rest his head. He closes his eyes, in dire need of a nap. His course load this semester is kicking his ass, and it’s just going to get worse after break, the last few weeks of the school year packed full of tests and papers before the mad scramble that is finals season.

For these three days they’re staying with his ma, Sam is resolved to do no homework. He’s going to rest up and spend as much time as possible lounging around on top of Challa.

Beneath him, Challa settles. He cradles Sam’s head, stroking Sam’s cheek with his thumb. The movement is soothing, rhythmic, and Sam goes boneless, not asleep but not awake either, as he listens to Challa’s heart beat under his ear.

“Sam?” 

He feels his name rumble in Challa’s chest, and presses closer. “Yeah?”

“After spring break, there are only a few weeks left before finals.”

“Yeah.”

“And then there are finals.”

Sam blinks his eyes open, tensing up. The motion of Challa’s thumb on his cheek falters. “Yeah.”

“And then.”

Sam damn well knows what comes after that  _ and then _ . He’s working very hard to live in denial about it, despite the concern of his therapist and his mother and his friends. It’s taking a good amount of energy to keep from wallowing in despair all the time, so wherever this conversation is going, Sam wants no part of it.

“Right, that’s gonna suck,” he says, sitting up. Challa jumps, surprised but his sudden movement. “Hey, I’ve gotta check to see if Ma needs any help with dinner. You coming?”

Challa frowns up at Sam for a few seconds, and if he’s really going to push Sam to talk about this, after all the hard boundaries he’s drawn around the parts of his life Sam isn’t allowed to ask about - including his goddamn  _ name _ \-  then they’re going to have a big problem.

Shoulders sagging, Challa lets out a big sigh, and reaches out a hand for Sam to pull him to his feet.

* * *

 

Seated around the table out on the back deck, Sarah is talking to Steve and Bucky about some elementary school drama that went down with another parent last week, while Ma clicks her tongue in sympathy. Sam listens with half an ear, too busy staring out across the back yard to pay attention. 

Challa’s seated cross legged in the grass, Jamie and Jody in front of him. He’s holding an impromptu introduction to woodworking class, teaching the girls the finer parts of whittling using bars of soap instead of wood, toothpicks instead of knives.

Jamie’s laser focused, her tongue poking out between her lips as she watches Challa demonstrate something on his own soap bar and mimicking him precisely. Jody keeps giggling, listing sideways into Challa’s side as he makes funny faces at her.

Given the number of times Challa’s gently tried to bring up  _ after finals _ over the course of the last two days, Sam’s despair is closer to the surface than usual this evening. Watching Challa with his nieces is painful. The girls probably won’t see him again after this. They will get only this one class on woodworking, like Sam will only get a couple more months of Challa.

Watching them hurts, but looking away would be worse, so he stares and broods and ignores the conversation around him. 

He’s so intent on the sight before him, so wrapped up in his own head that it takes him awhile to notice that everyone gathered around the table has gone silent.

And they are watching him, watch Challa.

Taking a big gulp of his drink, Sam pretends not to notice.

“Lord in heaven,” Sarah scoffs, shaking her head.

“What?” Sam asks.

Sarah purses her lips, giving Challa and the girls a significant look, before she looks back to Sam, one eyebrow raised.

“I don’t know what that face means,” Sam says.

Sarah scoffs again and Ma sighs.

“Oh, Sam,” she says, and Sam winces.

“You’re obviously gone on the guy,” Sarah says. “I know in the beginning you said you didn’t want to do the long distance thing.”

“I don’t.”

“You sure?” Sarah asks. With anyone else, he’d change the subject, making a joke or laughing it off, but Sarah has big sister powers. He deeply resents her for using them now, and in front of their ma and his roommates, too. “I know it’s complicated, but isn’t it worth thinking about at least?”

“It’s not an option,” Sam murmurs, staring down at the table because he can’t look at Challa and say this. “We agreed.”

“Yeah, but that was months ago,” Sarah continues. “Did either of you know back then that you’d be this into each other? That it would get this serious?”

Sam had some inkling. “We’re not  _ that _ serious.”

Everyone except Bucky snorts at that because Bucky Barnes is a true friend. 

“Sam, you more see more of Challa than I see Bucky,” Steve says.

Roommate powers have nothing on big sister powers, so Sam glares at him. “That’s ridiculous.”

“You see Challa during the day,” Steve insists. “Everyday. I don’t really see Buck until I’m home from work, assuming he’s not with you at the library.”

Sam glares even harder at Steve, who's got his stubborn chin up, ready to get into it, but Bucky squeezes his knee and murmurs, “Let him be, babe.”

Steve glances around, seems to recognized that he’s ganging up on Sam with his ma and sister, nods, and settles back into his chair.

“Sam,” says his ma, and suddenly this feels like this is an intervention, like it’s an ambush. Everyone is getting in their shots and Sam would very much prefer to crawl in a hole and die, anything to stop talking about this. “We don’t need to talk about it anymore tonight. But I think Sarah is just trying to say that maybe you need to have another conversation. It’s just something to consider.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. When he turns back towards the yard, Challa’s looking right at him, his mouth a firm, flat line.

There’s nothing to consider. Sam agreed to an expiration date at the very beginning, when Challa was so clear with his needs and expectations if they were going to be in any sort of relationship for his remaining months in America.

It’s best not to push, especially when Challa won’t even tell Sam his name.

* * *

 

Finals prove an effective distraction from the impending end of his relationship and Challa’s inevitable departure. He’s too tired to be sad most nights. Challa’s always close, but he’s quiet, too. Focused on getting perfect grades even in classes he hates for credit he doesn’t need or maybe he’s just sad to be saying goodbye to DC so soon. Sam can’t be sure.

After Sam’s last final, Challa’s leaning against a wall in the hallway outside the classroom and reading a book, waiting for him. The title is in Spanish. Probably a recommendation from America.

Sam freezes when he sees him. This is officially  _ after finals _ . Challa was done this morning and has no reason to stick around. For weeks, Sam’s avoided talking about this summer, hasn’t even asked when Challa’s leaving, and this is it.

Challa’s looking at him as the rest of Sam’s classmates rush past him, bouncing with energy and so ready for summer. They sound happy, jubilant, and Sam’s never felt so old and out of place in contrast, not even on his very first day as a freshman.

When the hall clears out, Challa doesn’t bother to finish whatever page he was reading. He just shoves the paperback in his back pocket, crosses the space between them in three determined strides, and takes Sam’s face between his hands, kissing Sam within an inch of his life.

Sam stumbles, wrapping his hands around Challa’s wrists to steady himself as he kisses back. It’s a thrilling kiss, deep and heady, unfairly hot given that they’re in a hallway on campus and not back in one of their rooms.

For a few blissful seconds, Sam forgets about  _ after finals _ .

But then Challa pulls away. 

Sam blinks at him, dazed, and Challa smiles, soft and gentle. He gets an arm around Sam’s waist like he knows that Sam needs all the help he can get staying on his feet after that kiss. He rests his other hand on Sam’s chest, tapping his fingers in time with Sam’s flying heart beat.

“What are your plans for this summer?” Challa asks, like he didn’t just kiss Sam stupid, like this is a normal conversation to have with someone you see everyday, after summer’s already began.

“Uh.” Sam blinks some more. “Volunteering at the VA. Applied for some part time work. Hanging out with Bucky while Steve’s at work, probably.”

“Hmm.” Challa’s caressing Sam’s chest now. “Since I am already in The United States it seems like a shame not to see more of this country than a few cities on the eastern seaboard, don’t you think?”

“Uh.” Sam’s brain isn’t working right. Despite all his denial, he still imagined the conversation he’d have with Challa after finals from every conceivable angle, the stoic, lengthy goodbye, the thanks for the memories. 

Challa is totally off script.

“There are other things to see in the United States,” Challa continues.

“Uh,” says Sam. “Yeah. It’s a big country.”

“There are things here worth seeing,” Challa repeats. His grin is shy, hopeful. It makes him look younger. “Places of supreme natural beauty.”

“Sure,” Sam agrees.

“Like the Grand Whatsits. There is something grand here. The Grand Caldera!”

“You mean the Grand Canyon?” Sam asks. “You want to stick around to see the Grand Canyon?”

“Sure.” Challa smiles at Sam, seemingly unconcerned with the actually Grand Canyon or how much he is confusing Sam. “Or other things. There is just more to see here.”

“Wait,” Sam says. “I thought you had to go home.”

Challa shrugs one shoulder. “I have no obligations in Wakanda until the end of the summer. Originally, I planned to depart the moment I was able, but now...”

He trails off and Sam swallows past the lump in his throat, finally understanding what Challa is proposing here. “Now?”

“Now, there is more I want to see here. And I don’t much care what it is, as long as I get to see it with you.”

It’s more time. It’s a stay of execution. 

Watching Challa leave was going to be painful enough after only a semester together, and it really might kill Sam, if they say goodbye after a whole summer together on top of that. 

He should duck and cover. He should protect his heart. He should say no.

Instead he laughs, delighted and relieved. He gets both his arms around Challa, hugs him tight and hides his face in Challa’s neck.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah. More sounds good.”


	3. Year Three

Challa goes back to Wakanda and Sam can’t stand his apartment. 

It feels like a graveyard, desolate now that Challa’s books aren’t piled on Sam’s desk and Sam’s closet is devoid of black sweaters. Steve talks in gentle, hushed tones, making Sam a lot of bad tea and mac’n’cheese. Bucky is just always nearby, hanging out where Sam is, and not saying anything; his support silent and near constant.

Sam appreciates their efforts and finds them highly irritating, all at once.

With the semester starting in four days and his schedule about to get busy, he knows he’ll be forced to acclimate to life post-Challa, but imagining that stretch of time spent in the apartment, with nothing to distract him from his misery but Steve’s cooking and Bucky’s loitering, is unbearable.

When Sam announces that he’s going to stay at his ma’s for a couple days, Steve insists that Sam take his car instead of riding the bus.

Just outside DC, a song comes on the radio with four on the floor, the kick drum on every down beat - boom, boom, boom, boom. Sam turns it off and drives the rest of the way in silence.

When he pulls into the driveway, Ma is just coming out the front door, Jody and Jamie in tow. The three of them are decked out in hats and sunglasses, carrying towels and floaty noodles.

“Pool day?” Sam asks as he locks Steve’s car, the beep making all of them jump on the front stoop.

“Oh, Sam,” Ma says, clutching her heart.

“Give me ten,” he says, jogging past her and up to his room to change.

* * *

 

They manage to get a prime spot under a tree, in the grass. The girls dump their stuff and immediately run off to jump in the water. Ma does her usual nesting thing, spreading out a big blanket, half in the sun, half out, and placing a couple chairs around it facing the pool to better keep an eye on the girls. 

Sam sits next to her, accepting a lemonade Ma digs out of the cooler for him. They silently watch the girls smack each other with noodles for awhile.

“So,” Ma says. “I take it Challa left, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Like he was always going to.”

“Yeah.”

“How’re you doing?”

Sam sighs, closing his eyes and letting his head thump back against the mesh back of his pool chair.

It was a good summer, a near perfect summer, even if they never did make it to the Grand Canyon. Sam worked at the VA and Challa suddenly had a series of mysterious meetings to attend, so they couldn’t find the time for a long trip, but they got out of DC plenty. They went on a few weekend trips, just the two of them, and did a week in Hilton Head with the whole group. 

Sam spent months mentally preparing for Challa to leave, but the summer felt deceptively calm, none of that frantic, desperate edge that made the last weeks of the semester particularly horrible. They settled into life together like it was the new normal instead of temporary, and when Challa announced that he was needed back home in August, Sam was shocked when he shouldn’t have been.

Sam’s still waking up in the mornings, confused by his empty bed, impressed that Challa managed to get up before him, and when he remembers Challa’s gone after those first few sleepy seconds, it’s a fresh kick in the gut.

“Bad,” Sam answers honestly and Ma lets out a sharp, shocked laugh. 

When Sam turns to glare at her, she smiles ruefully.

“I’m sorry you’re hurting, baby,” she says, squeezing his hand. “And I know this is going to sound weird, but it’s just good to hear you say how you’re really feeling. Remember when you first came home? And you kept insisting you were fine?”

“When I was the farthest from fine I could get?” Sam snorts out a laugh of his own. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not doing that now. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Ma.” Sam sighs some more and squeezes her hand. “It’s just going to suck for a while, that’s all.”

“Are you still talking to him at least?”

Dropping her hand, he crosses his arms over his chest and sinks lower in his seat. “No.”

“Why not?”

Sam shrugs. There’s a text on his phone from Challa, just a quick thing letting Sam know that he made it home safe, but Sam has yet to figure out how to respond so he just sort of  _ hasn’t _ . All the texts he’s crafted in his head have come out far too pathetic.

But Ma doesn’t need to know that.

“Sam.”

“It just wasn’t part of the deal.”

Keeping in touch after Challa left wasn’t something they ever discussed, not even the one and only time they really hashed out what their temporary relationship would look like when they first got together, and as much as Sam aches to tell Challa all the things he got used to sharing with him, tiny insignificant parts of his day and random thoughts, not talking is better. It’ll help Sam get over this faster.

“Oh, Sam.”

“It’ll be better when the semester starts,” Sam says, assuring her even as he assures himself. “I’ll be busy again, less time to miss him, you know?”

Ma purses her lips like she very much does not know, but she just nods anyway. “I’m glad you’re home.”

Sam hums his agreement, and doesn’t tell her that this doesn’t feel like home. Neither does his apartment in DC or any place Sam can think of.

* * *

 

During the fifteen minute swim break, Jody buys Fun Dip at the snack bar and comes to sit on the blanket at Sam’s feet. She dips one of the sugar sticks in more sugar and offers it to him. It’s hard to believe that he ever found such a thing appealing, even as a kid.

“That’s all yours, Jo,” he says, squeezing her shoulder. “Thanks for offering, though.”

Jody beams at him, her teeth stained blue.

“I’m glad you’re here, Uncle Sam,” she says. “You’ve got to come visit us lots before you leave.”

Sam blinks down at her. “Leave?”

“For Africa. You’re going to school in Africa next year.”

Surprised, Sam glances at his ma, who just shrugs. Jody was around for a couple conversations he had with Sarah last year, complaining about how many letters of recommendation he’d have to get just to apply and marveling over the sheer number of interviews he’d have to do if he got that far into the application process at all, but he didn’t know Jody was actually paying attention.

“I’m not sure if I’ll end up doing that,” Sam says. “And it’d be school in Wakanda, which is a country. Africa is--”

“Is a really big place with like a hundred diverse countries, blah, blah, blah.” Jody rolls her eyes. “I know. You told us. A bunch.”

“It’s fifty-five countries, actually.”

Rolling her eyes some more, Jody opens her mouth to reply, but Ma beats her to it.

“You’re not planning on studying abroad now?” she asks and Sam shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. “Why?”

“Is it because you got your heart broken?” Jody demands. “You can’t just give up your dreams because of some  _ boy _ . That’s so  _ dumb _ .”

Struck speechless, Sam just stares at his niece as she eats her Fun Dip and doles out wisdom. Next to him, Ma is grinning.

“Jody!” From the otherside of the grass, Jamie is jumping around and waving her arms. “Come play monkey in the middle!”

“Only if you’re in the middle first!” Jody yells back. A couple of teenage sunbathers next to them lift their heads to glare at the noise, and Sam glares back. This is a community pool in the summer, damn it. There’d be something seriously wrong with if the place wasn’t overrun with loud-ass kids.

“Fine!” Jamie replies. “Just come  _ on _ .”

Jody stands, carefully folding the edge of her Fun Dip as she hands it to Ma before taking off to join the game.

“Was my seven year old niece just giving me advice on my boy problems?” Sam asks.

“So you admit your sudden reluctance to study abroad is a result of your boy problems?” Ma asks, completely missing the point.

“Ma, come on.” Sam slouches even lower in his chair, until his ass is nearly on the blanket, and he hides behind his sunglasses. He is unwilling to examine his own sudden reluctance to study abroad too closely, and really can’t be talking about it with his mother.

“Jody’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s practically doing my job for me.”

“ _ Ma _ .”

“Why wouldn’t you study abroad, Sammy?” she asks, quiet and serious now. “You’ve been talking about it since freshman year.”

“I know.” He groans, sitting up and knocking his sunglasses out of the way so he can dig the heels of his hands into his eyes. “It’s just, the whole process is intimidating. I’ve got my first of three interviews with the GW professor who leads the program in a couple weeks, and if I get through that, it's two more interviews with him, and then an interview with a group of professors at the university in Jabari. And if I get through  _ that _ , it’s a final interview with The Chancellor of Foreign Visitation to see if they’ll even let me in the country.”

“Damn,” Ma says. “They aren’t messing around.”

“Wakanda is still an isolationist nation at heart,” Sam says, well aware that he’s talking way more than he has since Challa left. He’s had a few quiet days. No wonder Steve’s been making tea and Bucky’s been his shadow. “And you can’t exactly blame them for being wary on letting westerners in, not after the west spent centuries sucking the continent dry. I bet they are even more intense about the Chinese now, given what they’ve been up to in the last couple decades.”

“Listen to you,” she says, grinning at him. “So knowledgeable. So interested. You need to do this, Sam. You knew it would be hard before you applied.”

“Yeah.” Sam sighs, watching Jamie surrounded by a circle of kids, throwing a ball around and trying to keep it from her. She leaps into the air and makes a stunning catch, but lands hard on her side when she comes down, making a few kids around her gasp and Sam wince. She pops up a moment later, whooping in victory as the boy who threw the ball takes his spot in the middle, groaning.

“Sarah’s gonna be mad at me when she sees those bruises,” Ma says.

“She’s got to be used to it now. Jamie’s pretty rough and tumble.”

“You’d think. Why else wouldn’t you go, Sam?”

Since there appears to be no way out of this conversation, Sam just tells her everything. About his meeting with the guidance counselor and the realization that with studying abroad for a semester, he’ll have to take 21 credit hours for his remaining 3 semesters at GW if he wants graduate on time. He tells her about his GI Bill, and how it may or may not cover study abroad, and how going to Wakanda could actually be cheaper than a semester at GW, depending on travel costs.The university is free for all students, even foreign ones, so his fees would only include getting there, paying the GW professors salary, and enough money to live off of for six months in a foreign country. He talks about every little detail he’ll need to get figured out, if he wants to make this happen, and even so there’s no guarantee he’ll get in.

Sam’s not sure if he can take Challa’s whole country rejecting him, if he’s not accepted, but that’s another thing Ma doesn’t need to know.

He also does not tell her that none of the study abroad stuff seemed too daunting a task, before he brought up the possibility of studying abroad in Wakanda to Challa at the beginning of the summer, and Challa’s easy smile cracked into something brittle, more of a grimace than anything. Sam quickly changed the subject and they didn’t talk about it again.

A dozen times, he thought about being like, “ _ Hey, let’s keep in touch next semester and hang out if I get into the Wakandan study abroad program the semester after that _ ?”  But then he’d remember how Challa wouldn’t even tell Sam his full name and Sam kept quiet.

“There’s just a lot to figure out,” Sam concludes when he’s finally done explaining.

Ma hums, considering. “Well, you’ve never shied away from hard work. If you want it to happen, you’ll make it happen.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, because that’s the other big problem. He’s no longer sure if he wants it to happen. If Sam goes to Wakanda, there’s two possible outcomes. He’ll somehow manage to see Challa or he won’t. And each option sounds equally painful.

“You can’t just give up your dreams because of some  _ boy, _ ” Ma murmurs, smiling at him. “That’s so  _ dumb _ .”

Begrudgingly, Sam laughs. “I’ll at least go to this first interview,” he decides. “Just take it one step at a time.”

“Good.” Ma beams at him and then opens Jody’s Fun Dip, licking blue sugar off the stick. She sputters, pulling a face and puckering her mouth. “That’s disgusting. Kids like this stuff?”

For the first time since Challa left, Sam actually laughs, big and loud, thoroughly disturbing to the sunbathers next to them.

* * *

 

“To Sam and America,” Steve says, raising his beer in a salute. “Congrats and safe travels, my friends.”

“Hear, hear!” America leans across the table, clinking her cocktail against Steve’s glass and then Bucky’s before turning to beam at Sam. “It’s gonna be great.”

Sam’s had just enough wine to agree with her wholeheartedly.

Three days ago, Sam was accepted into the Wakandan study abroad program, and a week before that, America finally completed the arduous process of securing her Chilean visa for her own semester abroad. America insisted they treat themselves to a nice dinner out to a place with actual wait staff to celebrate. Sam agreed, despite the tingle of trepidation that’s been living in his gut since he got the news.

The numbers feel a little light these days, with only Steve and Bucky on one side of the table, Sam and America on the other. Natasha is up to her eyeballs in some research, and America’s girlfriend works full time in addition to her course load. The departure of the Wakandan coalition left a gaping hole in all their social lives.

It’s been quieter this semester, the apartment empty more often than bursting at the seams, and there have been moments over the course of the last few months where Sam retreated back to his solitary ways of freshmen year. 

Fortunately, neither Steve or Bucky  _ or  _ America let him wallow too long.

Listening to America complain about her own study abroad woes - she had zero interviews with professors in a foreign country but instead had to actually fly to LA to get her visa from the Chilean consulate - really inspired Sam to get his shit together. 

At some point late in September, Sam remembered that he’s wanted to go to Wakanda since he was a kid and has wanted to live abroad without being part of a war machine since he was first deployed. He did mock interviews with Sarah as practice, rewrote the required essay five times with Ma’s help, and scribbled out every last thing Challa ever told him about his home, memorizing every scrap of information the internet had to offer on the country, too.

Sam was the only one surprised by his acceptance.  

In January, he’s going to Wakanda for six months and it doesn’t quite feel real.

As they eat, America talks about her program, how she’ll be enrolled at a college in Viña del Mar and living with a local host family. There are a couple other kids from GW going to Chile for the semester, but it doesn’t sound like America has met any of them, or anticipates seeing much of them when she gets south of the equator. She’ll basically just be living and going to school in Chile like any other Chilean student.

The whole thing sounds like the opposite of Sam’s program, which will be lead by a GW professor with only GW students going. He’ll be living in dorms with the other American kids in his program, and doing work for the GW professor, on top of his Wakandan classes. As a group, they’ll be flying to Ghana for a week before they’re taken to Wakanda. There’s no commercial air service into the country, and the specifics on how they’ll actually be traveling to Wakanda are not yet known to any of them.

On Monday, he’s meeting with the group for the first of ten sessions to get a crash course in all things Wakanda before they leave.

“So, Sam,” America says when there is a lull in conversation, her tone careful and soft. 

Pausing with his wine glass halfway to his mouth, Sam’s straightens up in his seat. Across the table, Steve and Bucky share a significant look, and Sam should’ve insisted on taking the outside spot on the booth bench so he could make an easy getaway.

America has him trapped and he knows damn well what she’s about to ask him.

“I know you don’t like to talk about it,” America continues, speaking in a rush now. “But I’ve got to ask, Sam. I  _ have  _ to. You’re going to Wakanda! I can’t not ask.”

Groaning, Sam slumps back against the booth, nearly sloshing wine all over his shirt. America is not deterred, despite his obvious distress.

“Have you talked to him at all this semester?” she murmurs.

Sam takes a deep breath and says, “No.”

“Are you going to tell him? That you’re gonna be in his tiny country, going to the college he graduated from?” 

Sam swirls his wine in his glass, considering this very obvious question. He’s worked very hard to keep himself from thinking about Challa since he left, and it’s an impossible task when he stacks up leftovers in the fridge or sits at their favorite spot in Gelmen by himself, but Sam’s done a decent job keeping his study abroad decision-making free of Challa’s influence.

But Sam got in. He put in a deposit for next semester and is going to his first meeting with the rest of his class on Monday. He’s  _ going _ . It’s official.

And Sam honestly thinks there is a chance he still might bail on the whole thing, if he does contact Challa for the first time since he left and Challa is uninterested in seeing him.

“After I get there,” Sam decides. “Once I’m there and settled, I’ll see if he wants to see me.”

From across the table, Bucky snorts. 

“ _ If _ ?” Steve says. “What do you mean  _ if _ ?”

The Barnes-Rogerses wouldn’t be so damn sure that Challa will want to see Sam if they knew that there’s a months-old text from Challa sitting unanswered on Sam’s phone.

“Good,” says America. She scoots close, laying her head on Sam’s shoulder and squeezing his hand under the table. “That’s really good.”

The wine’s gone sour in his stomach, but Sam manages a smile and a nod for his friends anyway.

* * *

 

Professor James “Call me Rhodey” Rhodes looks too young to be a tenured professor at a prestigious university, the only reason GW has a study abroad program with The University of Wakanda, and also a decorated former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. 

The dude must be a decade or two older than he looks, because by Sam’s math, he just shouldn’t have been able to do it all.

Although Rhodey still stands like he’s military - chin high, arms back, elbows out like there should be a gun holstered on his hip - there is something strange about his gait. He takes his time sitting down, like he’s got some old war wound that still bugs him, and Sam always rubs his knee in silent sympathy when he sees it happen.

Rhodey dresses on the more casual end of what professors can get away with and even though he keeps his hair cropped short, his has a big bushy beard, dark black and streaked with grey, that he actually strokes when he’s thinking, like a bad actor in a made for TV drama.

When Sam made it through the interviews with him and onto the next round, all the Wakandas he talked to seem extremely wary of Sam’s military service, and Sam gets the feeling it was Rhodey vouching for him that turned them around. Sam can’t really blame them for a healthy skepticism of anyone associated with the American military machine, but if he never has to speak about his complicated feelings regarding his service to a bunch of total strangers again it’ll be too soon.

This is the fourth time Rhodey’s taken a small group of students to Wakanda for a semester, and he apparently has a decades long relationship with some high up Wakandans, but he only offers a vague explanation about how that happened. Something about meeting a Wakandan engineer in Germany in the process of getting his then boyfriend (now husband) out of some scrape involving proprietary technology.

The ten other kids in Sam’s program seem as equally hand picked by Rhodey as Sam. It’s a good group, but Sam immediately flocks towards Claire Temple and Luke Cage, the only other students that, like Sam, started the whole college thing later than your average high school graduate and are well into their twenties.

Claire is pre-med and fully intended to buckle down and graduate college as quick as possible, but her roommate’s sister’s friend’s cousin allegedly was part of Rhodey’s first class to go to Wakanda and somehow convinced Claire that it’s “worth prolonging the misery that is college.” Luke doesn’t say much, but he’s an Africana Studies major that’s taken every class Rhodey’s ever taught and going to Wakanda is apparently critical to his thesis.

Sam likes his professor and he likes his peers. Sam is going back to Africa, to a mysterious country he’s been marveling over since he was a kid. Sam is fully vaccinated against every ailment known to humankind, is the proud owner of a mosquito net, and his bags are expertely packed with everything he could possibly need for six months in a different country for totally non-war related reasons. Sam should be excited.

Instead, Sam spends the whole night before he’s set to fly out staring at his ceiling and wondering what Challa is doing on the other side of the world, keenly aware that the next time Sam’s going to sleep in a bed, they’ll be a whole lot closer, with Challa none the wiser.

Composing the email he will send to Challa once he gets to Wakanda in his head does not help him sleep.

He gets up when he hears Steve puttering in the kitchen, getting ready for his early morning run, and does not look at himself in the mirror, unwilling to see how obvious it must be that he’s been up all night.

Steve gives him a mug of bad tea and gets the coffee going, squeezing Sam’s shoulder before he heads out.

Later, Steve and Bucky both drive him to Dulles. They pick up Luke and Claire on the way, Steve squished into the middle seat between them in the back because he’s the smallest. It’s still too early for much conversation to be expected, and Sam’s grateful no one seems to mind the silence. 

He’s not the only one who’s nervous, although Claire and Luke’s nerves probably don’t have anything to do with flying to an ex’s home country without having yet let said ex know.

At the drop off, Luke and Claire thank the Barnes-Rogerses for the ride and then loiter by the double doors while Sam says his goodbyes and has a mini freak out in Steve’s arms. Steve hugs him, pretending like he’s the one having issues letting go while it’s really Sam who needs to get his shit together.

“I’m gonna miss you guys,” Sam mutters and he means it. He likes the life he has with these goofy married white boys in their piece of shit apartment, and suddenly living abroad for six months seems like a wholly unnecessary risk. Like he’s gotten cocky with his recovery and he can’t actually handle being so far from his family, his therapist, his friends.

Stomach rolling, Sam flashes back to the goodbyes when he went to basic. Despite his mother’s tears and Sarah’s glare, he was still more sure in that moment that the Air Force was the right decision than he is right now about living in a foreign country for half a goddamn year.

And the Air Force was probably not the right decision, so what does that say about this?

Who the hell does he think he is? Leaving his entire support system and all the people who love him to spend six months on the other side of the world where he barely speaks the language. Where he doesn’t know how a damn thing works. Where he might not be able to cook at his leisure. Where he might die of malaria.  

What was he thinking? How did he manage to delude himself into believing that this is something he can handle?

“Hey,” says Steve. 

He pats Sam on the back and Sam somehow figures out that breathing is a thing his lungs are burning for. Counting out his inhales and exhales, he hides with his face tucked against Steve’s scrawny shoulder.

“It’s going to be great, Sam,” Steve says. “You’re gonna learn so much, and sure it’ll be hard to be so far away, but you’re gonna be awesome.”

Just like that, Sam remembers that he’s wanted to do this for years. Sam remembers that good things are worth the risk and that the chances of him dying of malaria are slim.

Just another second, and he manages to lift his head, smiling sheepishly at Steve.

“Yeah, man, you’ve got this,” Steve says, patting him on the back once more before shoving him in Bucky’s direction. 

Sam doesn’t hug Bucky, because hugging is not a thing they do, but they do go through their elaborate secret handshake, the one they made up freshman year mostly to test the dexterity of Bucky’s fancy metal arm.

“Ok,” Sam says when they are done. “Well, this is it.”

“Yeah,” says Steve, pouting. “We’re going to miss you too, you know.”

Bucky slips an arm around Steve’s shoulders and says, “The apartment is going to be so empty.”

Steve frowns up at Bucky. “It’s going to be weird just living with you.” 

“Thanks, babe.”

Sam rolls his eyes and backs away, towards Luke and Claire and a flight that will take them across the Atlantic.

* * *

 

The University of Wakanda is carved into a cliff side. 

Sam knew this going in. Rhodey talked about it as part of their preparation classes last semester. He said, “Whatever rudimentary-ass, cave-dwelling shit you’re picturing right now, you’re dead wrong.”

Intellectually, Sam thought he was prepared.

He’s stunned silent along with the rest of his classmates, when they actually get to see the place.

The school is only a ten minute walk along the river from their student housing off the main drag in Jabari, which is already impressive enough for a college town. Once they get out of the main square, the jungle closes in, forming a tunnel of lush green and bright splashes of colorful flowers. The water next to the path is a pale, clear blue, and the walk takes triple the time it does for locals, as the class gets distracted by a couple snapping turtles sunning themselves on the shore, among other spectacular sights.

The paved path sees heavy traffic in the mornings, people who live outside of town coming in for work, on foot, on bikes, on a myriad of different personal motorized vehicles that Sam’s never seen before. Another example of that legendary Wakandan technology. 

They are far from the only students headed towards campus. Big groups walk by, loaded down with books. A few even recognize Rhodey, waving and calling out greetings in Wahili. They smile indulgently and knowingly at Sam’s class, and yeah, it’s gotta be pretty obvious that they are gobsmacked tourists, here on their first day and overly amazed by turtles.

The main path splits, and they bear right at Rhodey’s instruction, headed towards the university. After another minute walking, they come to the clearing where two stone buildings are perched on either side of the river and connected by a arching bridge, every facade draped in roped vines and green moss. Behind the buildings looms a large glass atrium built over the river, with the cloudless blue sky opening up above it. 

Students stream into the building on the left, while Rhodey herds them towards the smaller one on the right. They walk into what appears to be a front office, the room’s kept cool with its stone walls and green granite floors.

“Rhodey!” says the woman seated at the front desk, standing when she sees them. “Nimafurahi kukuona!”

Rhodey grins, replies in kind, and then hugs her when she comes around the desk. “Everyone, this is Xoliswa.”

“Habari ya asubuhi,” she says, turning to the group of them gathered awkwardly in the entry way.

Everyone says good morning back, in rough, stilted Wahili, and she beams at them.

“What a group this year,” she says, patting Rhodey’s arm.

Rhodey shrugs. “They’ll do.”

Xoliswa checks off their names on her tablet, confirming their identity with a fingerprint, and then leads them past the front desk, through a hallway, and out another door that opens up into the massive glass atrium.

Students are milling around, laughing and happy, greeting each other on the first day of term. They are lining up in front of two banks of glass elevators, separated by what appears to be an observation deck, with a glass floor that extends past the elevators over the edge of a cliff.

“We always schedule extra time to account for new students taking in the view,” Xoliswa says, her smile patient and understanding. She walks in place double time, like she’s itching to move much faster but is forcing herself to wait as Sam and his class all gape up at the great glass dome above them, the lot of them gasping audibly as a trio of fabulously plumed birds fly overhead.

“It’s a pretty good view,” Claire says. She’s totally stopped walking, staring straight above her. 

Xoliswa laughs. “Not that view.”

The University of Wakanda is built into a cliff side and curved around a waterfall, eighteen underground floors carved into stone and accessed by elevators. At the top of the cliff, there is a glass observation deck, where you can stand above a river as it pours over the cliff side. 

Sam looks down for awhile, marveling as water falls away beneath his feet. Then he walks on, to where the transparent floor extends over the edge of the cliff, until there is nothing but 200 feet of air below him. He watches the water flow into a pool at the bottom of the cliff, and for a moment, it’s like he’s flying again.

Resisting the urge to lay flat on the glass floor, he looks down, spreads his arms wide, and remembers the rush of air against his face.

When Xoliswa calls them away, Sam’s not ready to leave.

* * *

 

The elevators are built right on the face of the cliff, and Sam watches in fascination as they ride one down. A couple kids cower in the back of the elevator, as far away from the glass as they can get.

“This place will cure you of that fear of heights, that’s for sure,” Rhodey says gently. “Exposure therapy.”

Xoliswa tells them that the lower the floor, the newer it is. The first five floors near the surface were originally excavated at least a thousand fucking years ago and are mostly tunnels, built back from the cliff face. The newer floors run parallel to the cliff face, so each classroom can have windows and sunlight, a fair few of them with sky decks too, like mini versions of the observation deck on top of the cliff.

The whole thing is a marvel of engineering and completely breathtaking.

Sam’s still pretty overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of the place when he’s ushered into a guidance counselor's office to get setup with his student ID and schedule. The advisor introduces herself as Banou and is no nonsense and competent in a way that makes Sam miss his ma.

She’s in the middle of explaining the technology of the little medallion that they use for student IDs that should be worn on his person at all times and will give him access to all areas of the university he’s allowed access to, when Sam notices the sole framed picture sitting on her desk.

Challa is smiling at him from a photograph, his arm thrown over Banou’s shoulders as they hold a plaque between them.

Sam blinks, staring hard and expecting the familiar face to change. He’s only been in Wakanda for two days, but already he’s superimposed Challa’s face over those of multiple Wakandans. As he walked by the river this morning, Sam was doing double takes every few seconds, convinced he saw Challa out of the corner of his eye only to be relieved and disappointed and faintly nauseous when, upon further investigation, they were strangers.

But the man in the photograph remains Challa, no matter how hard and fast Sam blinks.

“Ah,” says Banou, when she notices what’s caught Sam’s attention. “That was taken the morning our prince completed his physics degree, during the celebration with the rest of his class. I was his advisor.”

Sam tears his gaze away from the picture to frown at Banou. “Your  _ what  _ now?”

“The prince,” Banou repeats, speaking very slowly. 

Sam’s brain isn’t really working, so no matter how slow or often the word is repeated, he just doesn’t get it. “Prince?”

“Yes, the son of the king? Future ruler of Wakanda? The  _ prince _ . Surely you’ve heard of the concept. He studied here.” 

Sam gapes at her and then goes back to staring at the picture, trying to make Banou’s words fit with all the memories of the man who kissed Sam between classes and couldn’t manage to be a fully functioning human before noon.

“He looks so young,” Sam murmurs, because he does. This is Challa at nineteen, his face rounded with youth but his smile just as wide.

“Oh,” says Banou, surprised. “Do you know Prince T’Challa?”

T’Challa. 

Prince T’Challa.

The man in that photo is Prince T’Challa of Wakanda, son of King T’Chaka, future ruler of the whole country.

Through the haze of his shock, Sam’s stomach churns and realization dawns.

“No,” he replies, breathless. “I really don’t.’

* * *

 

There is a tour of campus. The massive, well-lit library is in a cave, six floors carved around the hallowed great room with tables for studying setup around towering stalactites and stalagmites. Then its then down to the ground level, where students swim in the pool under the waterfall and play a game on the fields surrounding the water with a round ball, a cross between soccer, football, and lacrosse. They have lunch by the water with the president of the university, as well as a couple other higher ups, and then go into a more formal orientation to learn the rules, expectations, and grading scales. 

Sam barely absorbs any of it and couldn’t find his way back to the library under pain of death. He starts taking notes two minutes into orientation, recognizing that this is information he’ll probably need at some point and knowing that it’s not making it all the way through his ears and to his brain. Short term memory is not a function he’s currently able to utilize.

The words  _ Prince T’Challa  _ buzz in his head like static.

The walk back to their dorms in town is less magical than it was this morning, the color of the river a muddier blue and the bird-sounds squawky rather than melodical.

Claire asks him if he’s okay four times, and even the historically quiet and shy Luke looks concerned. Sam tries to use jet lag as an excuse, but they all recovered from that during their week in Ghana, and neither Luke nor Claire buys it. 

There is one group setting out to wander around Jabari, and another setting out to wander around the bars of Jabari, but Sam disappears into this room. He’s got a million moments with the man he thought he knew to pick over, the knowledge that Challa was hiding this huge part of himself suddenly has so many of his strange freakouts and weird quirks finally making sense to Sam.

Someday, Prince T’Challa is going to be responsible for maintaining a diplomatic relationship with the United States. Why else would he take all those foreign affairs and political science classes when he so obviously hated it? In retrospect, it seems so damn obvious, but the chances of Sam ever imagining something so farcical as the prince of Wakanda popping up in a DC gay bar, dressed up as a cat, were pretty much zero.

Sam sits in his room, and it takes him a better part of an hour to realizes he’s angry. He’s seething, furious, so mad that the view of the shady stone courtyard outside his window just turns into a blurry nothing. His skin is hot and he can’t seem to unclench his hands.

Turns out, Sam doesn’t know a damn thing about the man he spent the better part of six months with, and it’s infuriating. 

He breathes through it, gets his rage down from a boil to a simmer, and is finally clear headed enough to recognize that under this anger is a whole heap of hurt and betrayal and things even less pleasant than fury. It’s better to stay mad.

Steve and America are both online. He could Skype them. America would probably laugh and claim that this finally explains all those weird dramatic moments. Steve would be angry right along with Sam.

But Wakandan culture is traditionally private and if Challa wasn’t even telling Sam that he’s going to rule a whole fucking country one day, then he might not want Sam blabbing about it to his friends. 

Sam’s read at least three autobiographies on King T’Chaka, and not one mentioned the names of the king’s kids. Two of the three briefly covered the king’s family, a son from his first wife and a daughter from his second six or seven years later. One left out that paragraph’s worth of information entirely. 

That jives with what Challa told Sam about his family. They talked about their dead parents, Sam’s crystal clear memories of his father and Challa staring at his mother’s art because he was too young to make a single real memory of her when she died, so her bright canvases were all he had left of her. Sam told Challa that he freaked out a little when his ma met Malcolm and Challa told Sam that he refused to even look at his stepmother when his father first introduced them when Challa was five, even if he was calling her  _ mama _ by the time he was six.

And Challa wasn’t lying about any of it exactly, except now that’s what it feels like to Sam. It all feels like a lie, in the face of this huge, stunning truth.

All three of those damn books did discuss the rulers before T’Chaka, a long line of kings and queens with the traditional T apostrophe names. But they never mentioned T’Challa. Prince T’Challa of Wakanda. 

Those autobiographies had been pretty damn thin, and Sam knows now it’s because Wakanda doesn’t like the whole of the western world all up in their business. 

But Sam is not the whole of the western world. He’s a guy Challa supposedly cared about enough to spend six months with.

Restless and jittery, Sam considers going for a run or lifting weights in the dorm’s gym, but neither seem like suitable distractions. In the end, he decides to finally utilize the sleek kitchen on the first floor and make an overly elaborate meal, walking to the open air markets in the town square first to stock on up fresh ingredients.

He practices his Wahili as he shops, and actively does not remember Challa gently correcting his pronunciation and rewarding his progress with kisses.

* * *

 

On his third day of class, Okoye is waiting for him topside by the elevator bank in the atrium. She’s casually leaning on an actual spear that’s longer than she is tall.

He makes it a few feet out of the elevator when it opens, discussing plans for the night with Luke and Claire. They all agree that they need to be far away from the kids in their program who have been drunk the last three nights in a row and are planning on making it four. Someone in Claire’s class told her about a treehouse bar by the river, that is more about the views and the conversation than a party. Sam’s about to cast his vote, an enthusiastic yes for the treehouse bar, but instead he stops dead in his tracks when Okoye smiles at him.

Claire bumps into Sam’s back and Luke bumps into her, but Sam can barely feel it. He’s too busy gaping at Okoye.

She looks so different now. Gone are the long locs. Her head is completely shaved, less hair than Ayo even, and a series of black tattoos trace her hair line, forming intricate patterns around her skull. They’re beautiful, and Sam can’t really believe they were hiding under her hair the whole time he knew her.

It’s far from the only thing she and her friends were hiding from him last year.

It’s equally jarring to see her in Wakandan clothes - although the spear is not all that surprising -  when he’s so used to her baggy jeans and colorful crop tops. This outfit almost looks like a uniform, a sleeveless red tunic with a high collar over leggings, all hemmed in gold and metal details.

“What’s the issue, Sam?” asks Claire.

“Sam?” Luke echoes, the concern obvious in his voice.

“Do you not want to check out the treehouse? It sounds pretty cool to me, but if you have a better idea that’s okay.”

“Uh,” says Sam. 

He knew that that stumbling upon one of the three Wakandas he actually knows, before he managed to contact Challa himself, was a possibility, but now that it’s happening he’s too stunned to do anything but stare. 

Okoye takes pity on him, and says, “Hello, Sam Wilson.” 

Luke and Claire stop talking to join Sam in the whole staring-at-Okoye thing. Their shock is more reasonable than Sam’s. They’ve only been in the country for a handful of days, and there certainly hasn’t been time for Sam to go off and make friends on his own.

“Hey, Okoye,” he says. “It’s good to see you.”

“I hope that is true,” she murmurs, coming closer and turning to Luke and Claire. “Hello. I am Okoye.”

“Oh.” Sam startles and remembers his manners. “Right! Yeah, Okoye, this is Claire and Luke. They’re in my program. Guys, this is Okoye. She was uh--”

Sam’s run out of words again because he didn’t really understand Okoye’s reasons for being in DC last year before he found out about fucking Prince T’Challa of Wakanda, and now he’s got no idea where to even start explaining.

“It is nice to meet you,” Okoye says. “Have you eaten, Sam? Would you join me for dinner?”

Sam swallows down the lump in his throat and ignores the nerves rolling in his stomach. 

“Yeah, definitely.”

* * *

 

Back in town, Okoye brings him to a tiny Ethiopian restaurant only a block away from the dorms. Sam’s walked past it half a dozen times in the last few days and never noticed it. She greets the pair of older women who run the place, and Sam speaks enough Wahili to recognize that it’s not the language they are speaking.

Okoye rests a hand on Sam’s shoulder and gestures to him as she speaks to them. He catches his name and the women laugh and Sam tries to smile, but it’s a somewhat uncomfortable until the women both hug him warmly.

“This is Abeba and Eden. They say you are too skinny,” Okoye translates.

Sam laughs and says, “They sound like my ma.”

Okoye relays this and there is more laughing. Eden takes his hand and drags him over to a table. They bustle back to the kitchen without giving them menus or anything. Sam will gladly eat whatever they bring him, especially if it tastes half as good as the smells coming out of the kitchen.

“We are an isolationist nation,” Okoye says. “But we have never turned away those in need who have made it to our borders, as treacherous a journey as that may be. Their parents fled Ethiopia when Italy invaded in 1935. They walked, hitched rides, snuck across borders and slept in jungles. They followed old maps and listened to old stories and found their way here. They opened this restaurant in 1942 and raised their family. Now their daughters run it.”

“Wow,” says Sam, nearly speechless. “And we get to eat their food.”

Okoye beams. “Yes, and we are blessed to do so. The food here is the kind that stays with you, that you dream about and crave. I’ve wanted to take you here since we dined at that Ethiopian place in DC.”

Sam’s been moving between shocked and pissed about the whole prince thing over the last few days, but it’s hard to stay mad at Okoye. He’s always liked her. She understands good food.

“I can’t wait,” Sam says.

Okoye asks questions about DC and Sam’s last semester. They manage to fill the time before the food arrives with friendly chatter, although Sam can’t fully relax, knowing that eventually they’ll have to talk about Challa.

Or  _ Prince T’Challa _ , more accurately.

Abeba grins as she sets down a huge platter, six distinct dishes all served together on a bed of injera. She points to each and says a name. Sam recognizes a few, the wat looks particularly amazing, and as good as the Ethiopian food is in DC, this is going to be something special. They thank Abeba and dig in, using more injera to scoop up bites of everything else. While they eat, they groan over how fucking good it is, that perfect balance of flavor, spice and texture that makes Sam just want to spend the rest of his life eating. 

Giving up school and begging Abeba and Eden to teach him to cook suddenly seems like an excellent life decision.

“It’s going to be damn hard not to come back here everyday while I’m here,” Sam says when the dish is picked clean. He leans back in his chair and sighs, almost forgetting for one little moment that Okoye is probably buttering him up to talk about Challa - fuck,  _ Prince T’Challa _ . 

And sure enough, just as dinner comes to its natural end, when Sam would normal ask for the bill, Okoye orders a couple glasses of tej - a honey wine that always makes Sam sleepy and warm. 

From the way Okoye sits up and steeples her fingers together, Sam’s probably going to need the alcohol to get through this conversation.

“How did you know I was here?” Sam asks.

“Natasha told me first,” Okoye says. “We email. But I was keeping an eye on those accepted into the study abroad program, since you’d mentioned it. I found your name a day after Natasha told me.”

Sam frowns. “How do you have access to that kind of thing?”

“Allowing foreigners into this country, especially those from the United States, is still a new, highly controlled thing. Wakanda was isolated for so long, there is still doubt over letting anyone from off the continent visit here, and these movements are highly monitored. The information is accessible to those in my position.”

“And what position is that?” Sam snaps. 

Despite the food and the company and how much he’s always liked Okoye, he’s suddenly completely fucking done with the half lies and word plays these Wakandans have been feeding him for over a year. For once he just wants a straight fucking answer. He deserves to know who exactly he’s dealing with.

He deserved to hear it from Challa, not to see his goddamn picture on the desk of some random academic advisor. 

“Somehow I don’t think you’re a trainer at a gym,” Sam says.

Okoye shrugs. “Training is part of my duties. But yes, the job I worked in DC is far from my usual profession and something I did to pass the time and maintain a cover. In truth, I am second in command of the Dora Milaje. We guard the king. And also, his family.”

“You mean his  _ son _ . Holy shit, you came to the US as Challa’s personal bodyguards. You’re the freaking Secret Service. No wonder you were always so weird about him ditching you.”

Okoye purses her lips. “He wanted his freedom in DC and we often had to be content tracking him from a distance.”

“You tracked him from a distance?”

“He had trackers in his phone, his shoes, his necklace. He knew of all this, despite liking to sneak away.”

Sam scrubs his hands over his face and then drinks more honey wine. “Are you and Ayo even a thing? Or was that another lie?”

“We were married last September.” She shows Sam the carved stone rock on the middle finger of her right hand. “We told no lies, Sam, although I admit there was much kept from you. T’Challa is my friend, but he is also my prince. Ayo is my wife, but also another member of the Dora Milaje. T’Challa really was a student, spending a year in the US to learn more of your culture, politics, and people, but he will also be king someday.”

“Yeah, well. A lot of shit makes more sense now. He always seemed faintly royal. I thought he was just super rich or something.”

“Well, he’s that too.”

Sam snorts.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, and Sam’s grateful that Okoye didn’t turn this conversation into an interrogation and is giving him the space and time to process. He saw Challa’s picture three days ago, but this is the official confirmation.

T’Challa really is going to be a king someday. And his friends Ayo and Okoye are the married, Wakandan, more badass version of the Secret Service.

It’s just a lot.

“Does he know I’m here?” Sam whispers.

“No,” Okoye replies. “Or I think not. I do not believe he has looked at the enrollment records, nor has he kept in touch with anyone in DC. I have not told him. But he would want to know, Sam. He has been so unhappy. Stoic and sad.”

“Yeah.” Sam takes a shaky breath. “Join the fucking club, I guess.”

Okoye gives him a sad, pained smile, and reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. “This is why I brought you to dinner,” she says. “Well, I also missed you and wanted to spend time with you and see your face when you tasted this food. But I also planned to ask you. Would you like me to tell him that you are here?”

Sam frowns at her. “You’d do that? Keep something from him if I asked you too?”

“If he asks me directly, I would not lie. But I will also not bring up the subject with him if you ask me not to.”

Sam’s mad at Challa. 

It took him awhile to figure that out, but he’s angry that Challa left and he’s fucking furious that Challa kept so much of who he is from Sam. Part of him wants to say no. He wants to live in this righteous indignation that will surely crumble into more heartbreak if he actually sees Challa.

Fuck,  _ T’Challa.  _

But ultimately, Sam would just be hurting himself. Now that he’s here, in this country that’s he’s been reading about since he was a kid, it’s ridiculous to pretend that he doesn’t want to see Challa. Despite this glaring new piece of information, Sam’s tentative plans to contact him once bailing on the whole study abroad plan wasn’t an option, have not changed.

Sam takes a deep breath. “You can tell him.”

* * *

 

The dorms are empty when Sam gets back after dinner. He brings a book for his ancient Wakandan history class to the common room, trying to take advantage of the rare quiet to get ahead on his school work, but at any given moment Okoye might be telling T’Challa that Sam’s in Wakanda and Sam can’t focus.

Sam reads a sentence, wonders if Challa’s going to contact him, re-reads the same sentence, and then remembers some weird thing Challa did that only makes sense now that Sam knows he’s a prince. 

Of course Nelson freaking Mandela went to his sixteenth birthday party. 

Luke and Claire come in an hour later, and when Sam just shakes his head as they ask Sam how he knows Okoye, they start guessing. Eventually they come to a consensus that the connection goes back to Sam’s Air Force days. When they start to theorize on a tragic love affair, Sam rolls his eyes and decides it's time for bed.

As Sam brushes his teeth and washes his face, his brain keeps skipping to Challa - T’challa - like a tick. Sam thought his inability to go more than a few consecutive moments without thinking about him was bad last semester, but it’s a whole new level now. 

Sam checks his email before he goes to bed, deleting the junk, deciding to read a massive message from America in the morning, and then lingers on a familiar address, sent half an hour after Sam said goodbye to Okoye.

For the first time in months, he’s got an email from Challa in his inbox. 

It’s brief, cordial, simply congratulating Sam on getting into the program and asking to see him. He doesn’t leave his name at the end of the email, just says,  _ I miss you. _

Sam slams his laptop shut, flicks off the light on his bedside table, and flops back against his pillows with a huff. 

For a whole two minutes, he stays strong in his resolve to make the future king wait for once in his royal fucking life. 

Sam sighs up at his ceiling, curses the absurd state of this life, and then opens his laptop to reply.

He keeps it equally simple.

_ Name the time and place. I’ll be there. _

* * *

 

The time is the next evening. The place is Challa’s house, a ten minute drive from campus. There will be a car awaiting Sam topside, after his last class.

Sam always got the feeling that Challa -  _ T’Challa _ , fuck that’s going to take some practice - spent the majority of his time at the family home in Birnin Zana, the capital of Wakanda, learning the family business. 

Turns out that family home is the royal fucking palace and the family business is ruling. 

Given how much time  _ T’Challa _ has devoted to his education, it makes sense that he’d have a home in Jabari, too. They’re less than sixty miles from Birnin Zana here, and Sam spends too much of the day trying to figure out if this means Prince T’Challa is actually living in Jabari or if he’s just coming to town especially to see Sam, despite having nothing to go on.

Claire asks him no less than six times throughout the day if he’s okay. Sam bites back hysterical laughter and nods.

As promised, there is a car waiting for him topside after his last class, a black, jeep-looking thing, driven by a kid that looks barely old enough to attend the university. 

Turns out, she’s not old enough to attend the university. She’s still a high schooler, making a little extra money driving when the prince asks her.

“Prince T’Challa also allows me to work on the engines,” she says, bouncing in her seat as she navigates through dense jungle roads. “He was not even angry with me when I took apart the engine on this one and wasn’t able to put it back together again properly. Instead he taught me how. I’m going to study engineering at the university when I’m old enough.”

“Good for you, kid,” Sam replies. She never actually introduced herself. Just shook Sam’s hand enthusiastically, opened the door for Sam to get in, and then started talking a mile a minute. 

Sam’s grateful that this isn’t like America, where drivers are expected to stay silent while their rich patrons lounge in the back.

“Ah, here we are!” The kid pulls over next to what appears to be more of the same dense jungle. He was expecting a gate or some kind of security or really anything that would indicate that a prince lives here, but from the road he can’t even make out a house. 

The kid looks at Sam expectantly, and Sam takes a deep breath, his hand sweaty on the door handle. When he slides out of the jeep, he looks around and still has no idea where he’s supposed to go to find Challa’s house.

“Uh,” Sam says, hesitating to close the door.

“Oh!” The kid hops out of the jeep and comes around the front, gesturing for Sam to follow a couple feet down the road. “It is very hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

She pulls aside a massive fern leaf, bigger than she is, and holds it back to reveal a narrow dirt path. Sam regards it dubiously and then looks at the kid.

“Off you go!” She smiles at Sam. “You would not want to keep the prince waiting.”

Sam grinds his teeth together and works real hard to keep from glaring over the word  _ prince _ .

“So the house is just down there?”

“Yes.”

“Through the jungle?”

“Yes.”

“Just follow the path?”

The kid rolls her eyes and laughs. “It is not even a minute’s walk. Goodbye!”

And with that she turns around, saunters over the jeep, and pulls away with nothing more than a wave, leaving Sam all alone in the deep-ass jungle with no hope of ever finding his way back to town. The drive was short, but winding, and they turned at least seventeen times before ending up on the narrow dirt road Sam is currently standing on like an asshole.

Suddenly he’s very aware that he’s in a foreign country, with no real clue how anything works. He’s heard horror stories of hapless American tourists getting kidnapped and ransomed. The state department even has a travel warning out for Wakanda, but Rhodey assured them all that the warning is because so few Americans are actually allowed in the country and the US government is pissy about it, trying to turn it around on Wakanda like the reason Americans don’t come here has something to do with safety concerns.

And Sam trusts Rhodey when he says the country is safe, but he is very much alone in the jungle, and for a few terrifying seconds he convinces himself that the kid was actually some part of a terrorist organization that delivered him right into a trap.

It’s possible that his time in the military made him overly paranoid.

Once Sam is over his sudden and irrational fear of kidnapping, he still hesitates on the edge of path as he holds back the giant fern leaf. In less than a minute’s walk, Sam will see Prince T’Challa of Wakanda, the guy Sam spent one semester falling for and another missing, the one who never bothered to tell Sam the truth about who he is. 

And that guy Sam pined for - when no one argued with Wheatley in class and when Sam went to bed alone and when they got the first snowfall of the year- doesn’t even exist. He was this whole other person the entire time, and Sam would almost rather set off on his own through this thick ass jungle than go meet the prince, only to realize that Challa was never real.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, and then sets off, letting the giant fern fall back into place behind him.

The path slopes down slightly and switches back twice before abruptly ending in a circular clearing where the jungle has been replaced with green grass and gardens. A little creek babbles on by somewhere to Sam’s left, and the setting sun is hitting the clearing at just the right angle to make every green growing thing in it look like it’s glowing from the inside out, soft light radiating through every blade of grass and leaf. 

In the very center of the clearing stands a tree so tall Sam can’t even see the top, with a circular house curved around it. 

The house might be the most bizarre structure Sam’s ever seen, four distinct, circular floors built around and up the trunk of the tree. Although one might expect a treehouse to be a bit rustic, this thing looks like it’s straight out of science fiction, all sharp lines of glass and metal. The walls all appear to be on tracks, some open to convert the space easily from indoor to outdoor. There are staircases looping around the trunk, too, inside in places and outside in others, connecting each floor.

Sam’s so distracted by how fucking cool the house is, it takes him a few seconds to spot Challa.

He’s prowling through the gardens, cutting a path between vegetable beds and flowers. The grass beneath his feet is smashed down, like he’s been pacing for awhile, and he looks just the same: Clothes, black and simple. Stride, long and powerful. Posture, straight and proud.

Sam watches him for a few seconds, and all the anger he’s been holding onto since he saw that damn picture on the advisor’s desk drains right out of him. What’s left is just the same old longing, the desire to be as close as possible to this man - Challa, Prince T’Challa of Wakanda, future king, whoever the hell he is - for as long as he’ll have Sam.

Continuing along his well worn route, Sam watches as he sticks the tip of his thumb in his mouth, gnawing away on his fingernail. It’s a nervous habit that only made an appearance during finals and in their last few days together before he left DC. Challa would catch himself at it and then demand Sam keep him from biting his nails. Sam would take Challa’s hand away from his mouth, kissing his fingers, and--

And Sam is ridiculous.

Lala, Challa, T’Challa, future king of Wakanda, that goofy kid who sat in on history classes for fun, whoever the fuck he is - he’s still the same guy, and Sam knows him, really knows him. 

Sure, there was a pretty big detail missing for awhile there, but that doesn’t change his hatred of simple music and his love of Christmas lights and his preference for sleeping curled on his side and a thousand other things Sam learned through months of closeness.

Sam walks towards the gardens and says, “Hey.”

For the first time, Sam actually manages to sneak up on Challa. 

Letting out a little squeak, he whirls around and stares at Sam, eyes wide and thumb still held to his mouth. He stays frozen and staring as Sam approaches, weaving through the gardens beds until he gets close enough to grab Challa’s wrist and tug his hand down.

“Hey,” Sam says again. the little bit of calm he found watching Challa pace around all Challa-like dissipates the longer he just stares at Sam. He drops Challa’s wrist and says, “Uh.”

“You’re really here,” Challa whispers, and then Sam’s got his arms full. 

Sighing into the hug, Sam squeezes Challa close and breathes into his neck for awhile, holding on long after the humidity and the body heat makes him sticky and uncomfortable.

“I missed you,” Challa says.

“I missed you, too.” With more bitterness than he was really aiming for, Sam tacks on, “ _ Your highness _ .”

Challa goes tense all over, pulling away, and Sam regrets breaking the moment, but there is no way Challa is going to get out of this conversation, yet again.

“Ah.” Challa stares at his feet, kicking at a clump of dirt. “ _ That _ .”

“Yeah,  _ that _ , Challa.” Sam crosses his arms over his chest, his anger returning. “What the hell.”

“I was hoping to give you a tour of the house first,” Challa says, smiling at Sam as if he actually thinks he can charm his way into a more pleasant reunion. “Show you the mechanism that opens all the rooms. And the staircases are movable, too. It’s a beautiful bit of engineering. Shuri helped design it and I know Sarah would love it. How is Sarah? How are you? How are--”

“T’Challa,” Sam says, low and stern.

Challa sighs. “Come inside. You look as though you are about to melt.”

* * *

 

Sam tries not let himself get too distracted by the beautiful kitchen that somehow manages to be even more glorious than the one in the mansion on O street. As they settle at the kitchen table with glasses of water, he does say, “It’s fucked up that you’ve got access to all these swanky kitchens when you can’t even make toast.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve been keeping up with what you taught me since I got home,” Challa says, prim and proper. He lifts his chin, takes a dainty sip of his water. “I cook things.”

Fuck, Sam missed him.

He’s got to bite his lips together to keep from asking for more details on Challa’s culinary exploits, and he counts to five before he trusts himself to stay on topic. 

“You should’ve told me,” he says.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Challa insists. “It’s not how things are done. My father did not reveal his true identity when he did his time abroad when he was my age, nor his mother before him or her father before her, and so on and so on.”

“You father, T’Chaka, the freaking King of Wakanda.”

“The very one,” he replies, smiling ruefully and leaning back in his chair. “You might be less in awe about the whole thing if you knew that I got my inability to function in the mornings from him. A truly regrettable quality in a king, I must say.”

“Holy shit, Challa.” Sam’s been in the country for six days, has know that his Challa is actually Prince T’Challa for four, and Sam thought he was getting used to it, but every once and awhile he feels smacked in the face all over again.

Sam scrubs both his palms over his cheeks and when he looks at Challa, he’s smiling, soft and fond. Sam wraps both his hands around the seat of his chair to keep himself from leaning across the table and taking Challa’s face in his hands to feel Challa smile into a kiss.

“Stop that,” Sam says, waggling his finger at him.

This just makes Challa smile more, the corners of his dark eyes crinkling, which really is the opposite of what Sam was going for. For a few silent moments, they just look at each other. 

Challa drops his gaze first, his whole face falling, as he runs the pad of his thumb along the edge of the table.

“I wanted to tell you,” he whispers. “But given what we were, I could not.”

There’s a lump in Sam’s throat, and taking a big gulp of water does nothing to make it go down. Even though he doesn’t really want to know the answer, Sam asks, “What we were?”

“You would never let me talk about a future for us past the end of the summer,” Challa murmurs, shrugging one shoulder. “It was obvious that when you said you were not interested in being with someone who was so far away, you meant it, and it’s not like I had the option of moving to the United States to be with you. How could I tell you, when our relationship would be over in a matter of months?”

Sam blinks at him for a few seconds. “Move to the US? You thought about that?”

“Of course not,” Challa says, rolling his eyes. “My father will rule for another fifty years, gods willing, but I would never leave my people or my country. It just seemed that staying in the US was the only way to be with you. And I very much wanted to be with you.”

“Oh,” says Sam. 

Suddenly every time Challa tried to bring up the future, past the end of the semester or the end of the summer, looks a whole lot different to Sam. He was so sure that Challa was just trying to remind him of their expiration date. It was so obvious that Sam was way more attached than he was supposed to be, and Sam couldn’t bear anything like rejection from Challa so he changed the subject and refused to talk about it. 

It was less painful to just avoid the conversation entirely, and everyone from his therapist to his roommates to his mother advised against it, but Sam was so fucking determined to pretend Challa was just never going to leave for as long as possible and look where that got them.

Sam wonders if the way he changed the subject and refused to talk about it looked like the opposite of what it was to Challa in return. Sam was so desperate to not think about their impending break up, that he somehow made Challa think that the only way to be with Sam was to stay in the US.

And Sam never knew the possibility of staying together after Challa left was anywhere near the fucking table. He was so sure that they had to be done when Challa left that he didn’t let himself think about any other options.

Now he stares at Challa now and knows he would consider just about anything, if it meant they could be together.

“I mean, I get it,” Sam says. “Not telling me about the prince thing. I get it. I’m still mad at you, though.”

Challa huffs, turning away to look out the window. “Well, I’m mad at you, too.”

Sam winces. “Because I never texted you back that one time?”

“Yes, that too.”

“I wanted to,” Sam confesses. “But you were gone and I thought talking to you when there was no hope of actually being with you would just make it harder to get over you.”

“I never wanted anyone to get over anything in the first place!”

“Well, I didn’t know that was an option!”

“Because you never let me even suggest it! Always changing the subject and giving me that we-aren’t-talking-about-this stare.”

Sam crosses his arms over his chest. “I do not have a stare that specific.”

“Yes, you do. It’s all in your eyebrows. They’re very expressive, specifically so.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess?”

Challa’s got pretty damn expressive eyebrows himself, and he’s using them to glare at Sam like no one’s ever glared before. It’s a strange sight on Challa, who usually goes blank faced when he’s angry.

“I didn’t want to get over you either,” Sam says. “I just thought I had to. You wouldn’t even tell me your real name. How was I supposed to know you’d changed your mind about the temporary status of our relationship when you wouldn’t even tell me your damn name? I thought for sure you’d say no if I asked for anything more.”

“Well, how was I supposed to tell you my true name when you would not so much as discuss a change in the temporary status of our relationship?”

For a few heavy seconds, they just look at each other.

“Wait, hold up.” Sam puts both palms up and tries to get his thoughts in order. “Let me get this straight. You wouldn’t tell me your real name because you thought I just wanted to be with you through the summer and I thought that you only wanted to be together through the summer because you wouldn’t tell me your name? Is that really the situation here?”

“It would appear so.”

“What the fuck is wrong with us?” 

Challa giggles into his palms, the sound cutting through the bright kitchen and making Sam jump in his seat, it’s so unexpected.

“Challa!” Sam frowns. “It’s not funny.”

Challa laughs even harder, shoulders shaking and eyes squeezed shut but Sam is not yet ready to see the humor, given how fucking miserable he’s been since Challa left. He just groans, curling over to let his head thunk against the tabletop. 

“It’s just so ridiculous!” Challa wheezes out between fits of laughter.

To the polished wood surface of the table, Sam says, “We are so bad at this.”

“At what, darling?” Challa asks, managing to stop with the hysterical chortling.

“This.” Sam lifts his head and waves his hand between the two of them. His brain just skips over the endearment, leaving it to examine and cherish later, when he’s done beating himself up over how thoroughly he’s fucked up everything with Challa. “Talking. Communication. Sharing our damn feelings.” 

“Oh, yes.” Challa sighs. “ _ That _ .”

“Well, I’m bad at it. You at least tried.”

“I could’ve been clearer.”

“I could’ve said just one damn thing at all,” Sam mutters. 

“Well,” says Challa, tapping his fingers on the table. “We will just have to be better in the future, won’t we?”

“The future, huh? You think we’ve got one of those.”

“Yes.” Challa’s tone leaves no room for argument, so transparently a prince in this moment.

“Wow,” Sam says, grinning. “You really like me, huh?”

“Of course,” Challa says, frowning like he’s completely baffled. “Surely you knew this.”

“Eh.” Sam shrugs. “I knew you liked me more than you liked most things in America. But this is a whole other level of liking.”

“It is,” Challa says, his smile soft and shy now. “One might even call it love.”

That’s a word Sam’s started beating back with a stick sometime around Spring Break last year, another thing that he thought was nowhere near the table, and to hear Challa say it now - so easily, like it should be obvious - makes his stomach swoop and his heart race.

“Would one?” Sam squeaks and Challa’s smile gets fonder. He clears his throat before he can continue. “I mean I, for one, would. I just didn’t know you would, too.”

Looking to the ceiling like Sam’s trying his patience, Challa lets out a big breath. 

“Sam,” he says, looking Sam right in the eye as he gathers his thoughts. “I’ve adored you since you teased me about my Halloween costume while we waited in line to use the bathroom.”

“I wasn’t making fun of it,” Sam mutters, getting off topic in his shock.

Challa rolls his eyes, but ignores Sam’s nonsense. “You spoke to me like I was a person, not some foreign oddity. You admired that I snuck into history classes for fun and you took the most organized, beautifully penned notes on Wheatley's lecture. Really, you have lovely penmanship, darling.”

This, of all things, makes Sam blush. “Thanks, babe.”

“You answered all my questions about the United States and the questions you asked me in turn were even better.” Challa’s on a roll now, listing every one of his favorite moments from their time together. They’re Sam’s favorites, too. “You fed me and let me read every brilliant, poignant, insightful essay you wrote on Africa and did not even tease me when I was running around in the snow for the first time like a child. It was my first time seeing snow. Did you know?”

Sam grins. “I had a feeling.”

“You shared your family with me, made me feel welcome and wanted when I was so far from my people, and in those months we were together, you became crucial to what home is to me. In the face of all that, how could I not love you?”

Sam stares at Challa - his expression open, vulnerable, hopeful, the most beautiful man Sam’s ever seen - and he tries to reply in kind. He’s got endless list of things he loves about Challa. He could write a thesis on Challa’s wit and his lap and his inherent ability to make everyone he talks to feel hear. 

Challa is home to Sam, too. Now Sam just needs to open his mouth and tell him.

“You really didn’t know,” Challa whispers.

Words still beyond him, but Sam does manage a shrug.

When Challa rises from his seat, graceful as always, Sam watches him warily, suddenly more aware of what his eyebrows are doing since Challa accused them of being specifically expressive. Challa comes around the table, his movements slow and entirely cat-like, and Sam’s mouth goes dry. 

“I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify my position,” Challa murmurs, squeezing Sam’s arm and then sliding his palm along the breadth of Sam’s shoulders. 

“Oh?” After a moment of hesitation, Sam reaches up to touch Challa’s chest, seeking out his heartbeat.

“You, my dear, seem to be laboring under the misconception that I do not want you. But I do. I want all of you.” He leans close, breath hot on Sam’s ear, and Sam’s eyes flutter shut. “Allow me to show you."

* * *

 

Challa’s bedroom takes up the entire top floor of the house. The ceiling is a glass dome that reminds Sam of the atrium at the school, and Challa’s huge circular bed is in the center, it’s halfmoon headboard curved against the tree that runs through the middle of Challa’s house and up beyond the glass ceiling. A balcony wraps around the circumference of the floor, but Sam hasn’t gotten a chance to explore much of the room besides the bed.

It’s a really good bed, mostly because Challa is in it with him, naked and still panting. 

With the familiar lines of Challa’s body under his hands, the comforting taste of his skin in his mouth, Sam finally found some of those words. Sam didn’t need to be shown how much Challa wants him, not after a few minutes kissing Challa and holding Challa and convincing himself that everything Challa said was true. So Sam did the showing, whispering praise to Challa’s collarbones and reminding them both of just how well Sam knows Challa, knows how to make him groan and writhe and whimper, future ruler of Wakanda or not.

In bed with Challa, Sam said everything he should have said a year ago.

Now they lie side by side, breathing through the afterglow, and Sam’s finally mindful enough to appreciate the view above him. The tree remains branchless for fifty more feet, until well above the canopy of the rest of the rainforest, before it spouts into a tangle of branches at the very top, covered in dark, glossy leaves.

Of course the Wakandans figured out a way to build an elaborate modern marvel around a tree and still keep it living.

“Now that is a fucking tree,” Sam says, breathless and nonsensical.

“ _ Entandrophragma excelsum,”  _ Challa says. “A beautiful  specimen .”

Sam laughs. “Of course you know the scientific name. You are such a dweeb.”

“That’s Prince Dweeb to you.” Challa rolls over, plastering himself completely against Sam’s side and nuzzling into his neck. “And one that just rocked your world.”

Closing his eyes, Sam hums his agreement and runs his hand down the length of Challa’s spine. 

“Rocked my world is right,” Sam says. “Where did you even learn that phrase?”

“America.”

“As in the country or from the person.”

“The person, of course.” Challa huffs. “The rest of the world does not refer to the United States as  _ America _ . How arrogant and nonspecific, to take the name of two entire continents as your own.”

“Right.” 

Above him, the sky is going orange with the sunset and Sam wants to keep looking at it, but he hasn’t even begun to look at Challa enough to make up for their months apart so he turns towards him instead. His hair is shorter than Sam ever saw it, his face clean shaven, and he feels slightly different against Sam’s side, too. 

“There’s more of you,” Sam observes.

Challa laughs. “You flatter me, Sam.”

“No, seriously. You’ve bulked up. There is more of you and it’s all muscle.”

“Yes.” Challa sighs and shuffles around until he’s got his head propped up on his elbow, looking down at Sam as he speaks. “I might have upped my training to twice a day with Ayo, as a distraction.”

“Because you missed me.”

Challa rolls his eyes. “Yes. And there is less of you.”

“Yeah, well.” Sam turns on his side, mimicking Challa’s position. He is skinnier, the little pudge he had going since he left the Air Force disappearing sometime last fall. “It was a long semester. I didn’t feel much like cooking for some reason.”

Frowning, Challa reaches out and runs his thumb over Sam’s cheekbone. “My kitchen is at your disposal.”

“Yeah?”

“Anytime.”

Sam kisses Challa’s fingertips and says, “Earlier, when I guessed you were mad I didn’t text you back and you said, that too. What else are you mad at me about?”

“Well, it’s going to sound ridiculous after all that world rocking,” Challa replies. “But you’re here.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “You’re mad I’m here.”

“Not quite.”

“Ah, you’re mad I’m here and didn’t tell you.”

“Yes.” Challa sits up fully, crosses his legs beneath him and pulling the sheet over his lap. 

The cuddling portion of the afternoon must be over, and Sam grumbles under his breath as he sits up too, leaning back against the headboard and stretching his knee out straight in front of him. 

“You’re here, in my country, and you did not tell me,” Challa murmurs. “I understand that you were foolishly attempting to move on, but you were really planning on coming to my country, going to my alma mater, and never telling me? Never trying to see me?”

“I was going to tell you,” Sam confesses. “Once I was here and settled. And I think I still would’ve have eventually, but the whole prince thing slowed me down.”

They go quiet for a few minutes, but Challa lets Sam take his hand and scoots closer, until his knees are draped over Sam’s thigh. If Sam had a better explanation for his utter inability to reach out to Challa in a timely manner, he’d share it, but before he even got into the program to study abroad, he’d hoped for this. To see Challa again, to get a chance to talk to him for real.

“My plan was to tell you then,” Challa whispers, looking outside rather than at Sam. “I thought, you’d study here and tell me you were coming. So I was going to tell you my name, then, and tell you of my father and my future as a ruler of this country. I thought, you’d tell me if you got into the program, and then I’d tell you all.  _ Before _ you got here.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says.

Challa nods and leans down to kiss Sam’s shoulder. 

“Some heads up on the prince thing would’ve been nice,” he says, smiling now that Challa is. “I walked into my advisors office and there is your fucking picture.”

Challa perks right up, bouncing a little on the mattress. “Banou is your advisor? She is excellent. Surly, but brilliant and very funny, once you get to know her.”

“Well she thought I was a huge weirdo for staring at her photo.”

Challa hums and leans back against the headboard next to Sam, getting an arm around Sam’s shoulders and sighing happily when Sam leans against him.

“A prince. A damn  _ prince _ ,” Sam mutters.

“Hmm,” says Challa.

“It’s so fucking obvious, now.” Sam shakes his head and gets lost in memories of a thousand strange little moments from their time together, now so easily explained by Challa’s royalty. “How did I not figure it out? Like, you being the future king of Wakanda is the only fucking thing that makes sense! I’m so fucking stupid.”

“You are not!” Challa holds him tighter. “I went to great lengths to keep it from you. Do not blame yourself for something I did intentionally.”

“Yeah, but you were really bad at it.”

Challa gasps, completely aghast, a hand flying to his chest. “I was  _ not _ .”

“You were.” Sam laughs, somewhat amazed that a couple hours in Challa’s company, a couple of shared orgasms and some conversation, is enough to get Sam to the point where he’s actually laughing about it. “Challa, babe, you were so bad at it. You once told me that Nelson Mandela was at your sixteenth birthday party.”

“Party is somewhat inaccurate,” Challa mutters, pouting down at his lap. “It was more an elaborate traditional ceremony followed by a three day celebration and national holiday.”

Sam is no longer laughing. That smacked in the face feeling has returned. “The whole nation celebrated your sixteenth birthday.”

“Well, Wakanda is a rather small nation.”

“Nelson Mandela was there!”

“Ok, you are right. I should not have told you that. It was a very unsubtle moment.”

“And that private tour you organized for my family of the museum,” Sam continues, shaking his head. “Of course you had to have some serious political pull for that one. And all those mysterious meetings you were sneaking off to, you were meeting important political types weren’t you? Making relationships on the hill?”

“The Oval Office is a very strange room,” Challa says. He hides a yawn in his shoulder like he’s not conversationally discussing the White House. “The shape of it is disconcerting.”

Sam blinks at him. “Holy shit.”

“I quite like the president's daughters.” Challa’s smirking a little now, so Sam knows that he’s being purposefully fucked with, but that doesn’t stop him from being all awed and gobsmacked over Challa’s life. “Malia in particular has a wicked sense of humor.”

“Oh my god!” 

Sam buries his face in his hands, takes a few deep breaths until he can reconcile the guy that kicked at a snow drift, giggling like a little kid, with the prince who spent enough time with the first family to know that Malia Obama has a wicked sense of humor.

Eventually he emerges from behind his hands and is once more able to look at Challa without getting all freaked out. He’s just smiling, like he’s both fond of and entertained by Sam.

“Anyway,” Sam says, scowling. “As I was saying. I should've figured out the prince thing. With how weird you got when I tried to ask you about your name or your father.”

“It is difficult to separate the king from the man,” Challa says, nodding. “I feared I would slip if I told you too much about him.” 

“Yeah, we wouldn’t have wanted another Nelson Mandela-like slip up.”

“But I can tell you now!” Challa says, back to bouncing on the mattress. He looks down right giddy, his face lit up. “This is so exciting. Sam, my father is my best friend. I adore him and I have all sorts of things to tell you about him.”

Sam takes a deep breath. “Your father, King T’Chaka of Wakanda.”

Cocking his head to the side, Challa stares at him, all puzzed and adorable. “Yes, of course. Who else would I be talking about?”

Sam laughs, only somewhat hysterically. “Look, I found out that you’re a prince like ten damn seconds ago and I haven’t really gotten around to thinking about the part where you being a prince would make your father the king. A king I’ve read three biographies about.”

“That’s ludicrous.”

“I mean, yeah, pretty much,” Sam agrees. “But, Challa,  _ babe _ , I’m gonna need at least three more days to get my head around this before you start telling me stories about your dad, the  _ king _ , okay?”

Challa lets out a contrary little sound, and Sam tilts his face away when it looks like Challa’s going for his lips. He waits patiently until Challa groans out, “ _ Fine _ ,” and then kisses him in thanks.

They’ve got hours of making out to make up for all the months they were apart, too, but as nice as its been to clear all this air between them, there is still one pretty major thing they’ve yet to talk about.

“So what now?” Sam whispers as he breaks the kiss.

“Well, I have several very appealing ideas,” Challa murmurs, waggling his eyebrows.

“No,” says Sam, shaking his head and fighting a smile. “I mean, we’re pretty much in the exact same place we were this time last year. There’s still an end date. I’m only here for the semester.”

Straightening up and raising his chin, Challa says with every ounce of his considerable princely determination, “I refuse to adhere to any arbitrary end date to this relationship.”

“Great,” Sam says. “But what does that mean.”

Challa opens his mouth to reply, but somewhere below them comes the sound of footsteps on stairs, and a slightly shrill cry of, “T’Challa!”

Challa winces and then gets out of bed, with utter calm and sinuous grace. 

“That would be my sister,” he says, bending to collect clothes from the floor. Sam is not prepared and when Challa tosses him his boxes, they get him right in the face. “Perhaps it is time for pants.”

* * *

 

From the otherside of the kitchen, Shuri regards him with narrowed eyes. Sam very much regrets that he was unable to shower before meeting her. She’s a tiny little thing, short and skinny, and her face is made-up with intricate white lines and dots around her dark eyes. She’s got Challa’s cheek bones, and his mouth, but Sam wouldn’t know if they share a similar smile, because she has yet to give Sam one of those.

After the introductions are made, Challa tugs Sam over to the refrigerator, proudly showing off his collection of fresh ingredients. “I was planning on stir fry tonight.”

“Awesome.”

“You’re cooking it.”

“Great.”

“Get out what you need,” he says, moving towards a sliding glass door at the back of the house. “I’ll pull some fresh vegetables out of the garden.”

And just like that, Sam is alone with Challa’s little sister, the princess. 

“So,” Sam says, pulling out a package wrapped in white paper and investigating the meat inside. “Challa says you’re at the university, right? What’re you studying?”

“You call him Challa?” she asks, glaring even harder.

“Yeah, it’s a habit. I’ve got to work on it.”

Nose in the air, Shuri looks very much like her brother at his most haughty. “He was very sad, you know.”

Sam winces and sets the chicken on the counter. “Yeah, me too.”

“But here you are,” she continues, drumming her fingers on the countertop.

“Yup,” says Sam.

“For only a few months. And after you’re gone, what is to stop my brother from once more becoming very sad?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, shrugging. “I’m hoping we’ll figure out a way for that not to happen for either of us.”

“Hmm.” Shuri surveys him in a way that reminds Sam of the way Challa looked him up and down in that dim hallway outside a bathroom on Halloween. Unlike her brother, she very obviously finds him lacking. “I’ve invented a device that can kill a fully grown man in less than three seconds. His heart will stop, just like that, leaving no trace. No evidence of murder. I thought you should know.”

Sam barks out a laugh. “Damn, and here I thought Okoye was scary.”

Shuri cracks a smile just as Challa comes back through the door, arms over burdened with veggies. On his way back to Sam, he gently bumps his hip into Shuri’s. She rolls her eyes, but smiles even wider.

“Were you being kind to our guest, sister?” Challa says, putting his collection in the sink and turning on the water to rinse it off. 

“Always,” Shuri replies. “He may stay for dinner. Inform me when the meal is ready, please. I’ll be in the lab.”

Head held high, she glides out of the room and up the stairs.

“She likes you,” Challa says as he starts to chop things.

“She threatened to kill me with some heart-stopping murder invention,” Sam replies.

Challa grins. “She likes you.”

* * *

 

No one threatens to murder anyone at dinner, and Shuri actually compliments Sam’s cooking, refusing to bestow similar praise on Challa despite the number of times Challa says, “I helped! I chopped things!”

Challa goads her into talking about her research by purposefully describing it wrong, and Shuri rolls her eyes at him, but tells Sam about it anyway. It’s a lot of fiddling with machinery from the sound of it, and it goes over Sam’s head, but he’s used to it from Sarah and still manages to ask enough questions to keep the conversation going.

In return, Shuri quizzes Sam on his classes. Both her and Challa smile indulgently while Sam gushes about the emphasis on cooperative learning that is the standard for education in Wakanda, and the lack of tests. Sam’s ecology class is basically a daily nature ramble through the jungle, and he’s already learned more about plants than all his previous biology classes combined.

After they’re done eating, Challa opens a bottle of honey wine, and Shuri begs off to get back into her lab. They sip their drinks as they clean the kitchen and when Sam makes a joke about princes and servants, Challa shrugs. “At our home in the capital, people work in the kitchens, but they are not servants. I know their names and we talk about our lives. This is not England. I’ve seen  _ Upstairs Downstairs _ , and you better not be envisioning such a thing.”

With the kitchen clean, they go outside, to a sitting area by the creek. Challa’s strung up every tree with white lights.

“I know that for us to have any long-lasting future together, it would mean me moving here,” Sam says, his second glass of honey wine giving him the courage.

Challa turns to look at him, the shadows from the lights doing extraordinary things to his cheekbones. He takes a deep breath and nods.

“I’m not saying I’m anywhere near ready to make a decision like that, but would it even be on the table?” Sam asks. “Like, you’re an actual, real life prince, dude. Don’t you have to, I don’t know. Marry some noble girl and get started on the heir-making?”

“ _ No _ .” Challa groans and slumps back in his chair. “Stop thinking about all those inbred European monarchies. We are not  _ that _ . My family rules because we are good at it. Divine rule is ridiculous and a recipe for greedy monarchs who are bad at their job, with no accountability to the people. If the ruler of Wakanda forgot their obligation to the people, they would be removed. This has not happened in centuries, because the kings and queens of my family have taught their children well, but it is a possibility.”

“Huh,” Sam says. “Someone should really write a book about this.”

Next to him, Challa takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “Sam, I can marry whoever I wish. My children would not need to be of my blood to rule. My guidance will be the important thing. And if I did not wish to be a father, then Shuri’s children would do. Or one of my multitude of cousins.”

“Oh, okay. Cool.” Although he’s glad he knows, he regrets asking. Challa has admitted to loving him, but it’s pretty damn presumptuous to jump right ahead to posible marriage scenarios. 

The night is still humid and Sam suddenly finds the air too thick to pull into his lungs.

“This is on the table for you?” Challa asks after a few silent moments. “Moving here?”

“Well,” Sam says. “Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Is that okay? Is that an option here?”

“Yes,” Challa replies immediately. “Of course it is. It’s wonderful. It’s my ideal option.”

“Oh, okay.” Sam lets out a big breath, the knots in his stomach uncoiling bit by bit. “Cool.”

Next to him, Challa knocks back the rest of his wine. He sets the glass on the arm of his chair and then rises, crossing the few feet that separate them. Arm draped over Sam’s shoulders, he settles in Sam’s lap. Challa kisses the top of his head, runs his thumb over Sam’s cheek, and together they listen to the creek, looking up at stars so bright Sam almost thinks he could just reach up and pluck them from the sky.

* * *

 

In the morning, Sam tries to slip out of bed quietly but the room is too dark to move around in without risking serious bodily harm. They went to bed under a domed glass ceiling and there must be some pretty spiffy technology in the windows because they went pitch black sometime in the night.

Sam trips trying to pull on what he hopes are his jeans and almost knocks into what might be a bookshelf.

“Sam?” Challa’s voice is a deep, raspy croak. It makes Sam want to crawl back into bed.

“Hey,” Sam says, distracted by the pant leg that won’t go past his knee. “Go back to sleep. I’ve got to get back to my dorm before class, but I’ll talk to you later.”

Challa mutters something under his breath and then shuffles around under the covers until there’s a soft click. The light starts to change in the room, so subtly that Sam thinks he imagining it at first. He stops struggling to get dressed and just watches as the blackness from the windows slowly fades, like an accelerated sunrise. The change is so gentle that Sam’s eyes even have time to adjust to the light, and a few seconds later the windows are transparent once more, letting in the full strength of the early morning sun.

“Damn,” Sam says.

“You’re attempting to pull the arm of my tunic on over your legs,” Challa says, peeking out from beneath a pillow.

Delighted by everything this morning, Sam drops the tunic and moves back towards the bed, leaning down to kiss Challa’s cheeks as he unearths them from beneath the pillow. 

“You’re up too early,” Challa whines.

“I’ve gotta swing by my dorm before class,” Sam says, rubbing Challa’s back. 

“We should’ve planned this better.” Groaning like he’s been mortally wounded, Challa sits up. He stretches his neck and then looks balefully up at Sam like some hapless baby bird. “Tonight, we will plan this better.”

“Oh, I’m going to be here tonight, am I?” Sam grins and runs his hand over Challa’s close shorn hair.

“I hope so. I’ve got to be back in Birnin Zana for the weekend.”

“Right,” Sam says, stifling a sigh. For a minute there, he forgot that this is not last year and Challa is not a student like Sam. He’s a prince with princely things to do, duties that called him back to Wakanda at the end of the summer and will take him back to the capital for the weekend. 

“Do not fret,” Challa says, turning his head to kiss the inside of Sam’s wrist. “I shall return. With Shuri here, I’m used to splitting my time.”

With that, Challa actually manages to get out of bed without any assistance from Sam.

“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” Sam says, collecting his actual pants from the floor and pulling them on.

“You’ll get lost in the jungle in three minutes and we’ll never hear from you again if I let you set off on your own.” Challa pulls out a fresh black tunic from a set of drawers, flicking his wrists and making the fabric snap to unfurl it. “Plus, I haven’t seen you in months, Sam. I’m not quite ready to let you out of my sight.”

Sam takes a little break on his way to the bathroom to wrap his arms around Challa’s waist, to hold him for a minute.

They’ve got time.

* * *

 

Challa’s got a little four wheel vehicle that looks vaguely like an ATV, but with two seats side by side. The ride is a lot smoother than any ATV Sam’s been on and the engine whirls instead of roars, running so quiet that Sam can clearly hear Challa pointing out landmarks and plants of interest as they head back into town.

Parking out front of Sam’s dorm, Challa leans back against his vehicle and reads a paper back while Sam runs inside to change. The dorms are already empty, the rest of his group walking to the university no doubt, and without Challa’s zippy little ride, Sam would be late to Rhodey’s class.

They make good time to school and Challa parks out front of the administration office building like he’s done it a thousand times before. 

“I’ve got a few people to talk to while you’re in class,” Challa says, slipping his book under his arm. “But can I find you later?”

Sam blinks at him, surprised that there is no issue with people seeing Wakanda’s prince just hanging out with some random foreign student, but Sam is done making assumptions on how monarchy works in Wakanda, so he’ll follow Challa’s lead.

“Sure.”

Challa beams and kisses Sam’s cheek. “Have a good class.”

“I’ll see you soon, Challa.”

Challa’s halfway to the admin building when Sam realizes he has hasn’t thought about him by his real name in at least sixteen hours and freaks out a little.

“Hey, babe, wait a minute!”

Frowning, Challa jogs back down the stairs and waits a minute.

“So, I’ve been calling you Challa.”

“Ah,” he says, nodding. “Yes, I didn’t notice.”

“You sister noticed. Other people are probably going to notice.”

“Yes.” Challa sighs. “With others, it is important you use my full name. It could be seen by some as disrespectful.”

“Yeah, that’s cool, man,” Sam says, rolling his eyes. He might be following Challa’s lead here, but he obviously needs a little direction. “I get it. T’Challa it is. I’ll see you later.”

Sam turns to leave but Challa catches his elbow and says, “ _ But _ .”

“But?”

Heedless of anyone who could see them, Challa steps closer, until he’s well into Sam’s personal space. He gentles his hold on Sam’s elbow and then slides his hand down Sam’s forearm to hold his hand.

“I like it when you shorten my name,” Challa murmurs. “It feels intimate. It reminds me that you like who I am, and not my title. And that has not been my usual experience when meeting foreigners.”

Suddenly the whole thing where Sam didn’t know the goofy kid sitting in on his history classes was actually a prince seems like a blessing. Sam is positive that if he’d known then what he knows now, they never would’ve made it here. He wouldn’t have been bringing a fucking prince leftovers or incessantly badgering him about his homeland, that’s for damn sure.

“So,” says Sam, clearing his throat. “When we’re alone.”

“You may call me Challa.” Smiling, he squeezes Sam’s hand. “But when you meet my father, best to keep it T’Challa.”

“I’ve still got two solid days of not talking about your father,” Sam says. Then he blinks rapidly, really taking in what Challa’s telling him. “I’m going to have to  _ meet your father _ ?”

“You did just agree to be my boyfriend last night,” Challa says and although that label was never actually used, they did do the whole love confession thing, so it’s as accurate as anything.

Boyfriend is good. Sam can do boyfriend.

“Meeting the family is typically part of this arrangement,” Challa continues.

“Oh my god.” Sam looks at Challa, wide-eyed and horrified by his sudden revelation. “My ma made the future king of Wakanda sleep on the shitty pull out bed in the basement. She’s going to straight up murder me.”

“Sam, please.” Challa huffs and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“There is not a single thing about this that isn’t ridiculous, T’Challa.”

Challa shrugs, but doesn’t argue the point. “You’re going to be late for class.”

Sam has to run to catch the elevators and even then he just makes it, sliding into the classroom just as Rhodey is saying goodmorning.

* * *

 

In a rather bizarre moment of deja vu, Sam finds Challa waiting for him after Rhodey’s class. He’s leaning back against the carved stone wall opposite the door to the classroom, paperback in hand. His eyes are closed, like he just sort of gave up on reading in favor of a nap.

Very aware of the entirety of his program loitering at his back, Sam goes over to Challa and pokes him in the shoulder a couple times. “Hey,” he says.

Challa opens his eyes very slowly, yawns widely, and then grins the goofiest possible girn at Sam. 

“Hello,” he says. Then he blinks a few more times, straightening up as he sees the crowd of American youths gaping at them. “Oh. Hujambo,” Challa says, managing to be at optimum royalness with just a single head nod.

Behind Sam, there are various stilted murmurings of  _ hujambo _ in return, and Sam has to close his eyes for a second to really process just how completely absurd his life is.

“Come, Sam,” Challa says, pushing Sam towards the elevators with a hand on the small of his back. “I want to show you my favorite spot in the library before your history class.”

As the doors close behind them, Challa’s giggling into his palms, leaning back against the glass side of the elevator, without even a single concern that the thing might give out and send him plummeting a couple hundred feet to his death.

“This is so weird,” Sam says, shaking his head. At some point, he’s probably going to have to introduce T’Challa as his boyfriend, oh and  _ also the future king of Wakanda _ .

“It’s much cooler to let people find out who I am on their own, rather than announcing it,” Challa says, still grinning.

Sam stares at him, face blank, eyebrow raised, arms crossed over his chest. “Is it?”

Eyes wide, Challa pushes away from the glass wall at his back - the first sensible thing he’s done since Sam’s class let out - and wraps his arms around Sam’s waist. “But not with you, darling. That was not cool. It was highly regrettable and I didn’t enjoy it at all.”

“Yeah, yeah.” But Challa’s smile is infectious and Sam uncrosses his arms, resting them on Challa’s shoulders until the elevator doors open on a floor that Sam’s pretty sure does not include library access, at least through the only route they showed Sam on the tour.

When Challa takes his hand to drag him into the hallway, he doesn’t drop it as Sam follows him.

* * *

 

The library is Sam’s new number one favorite place on the planet. So deep underground, it stays cool, and whatever technological magic the Wakandans are working to keep it both dry and brightly lit, is the stuff of miracles. When Sam closes his eyes and tilts his head back, it feels like he’s outside in the sunshine.

Challa takes Sam on a much more thorough tour of the library, showing Sam a spot deep in the stacks for when he needs quiet to really focus and then another sub-section of caves where students talk and collaborate. Sam also gets shown a little hidden alcove surrounded by stalagmites, that is apparently perfect for making out, something Challa was never able to indulge in when he was a student. Sam happy to correct that now.

The library is full of students and Sam watches them react to Challa carefully. No one seems particularly surprised by his presence, and a few kids wave or nod their heads in greeting, but for the most part he is treated like just another college kid.

If anything, Sam gets far more attention, speculative looks and people whispering as he passes, and Sam wonders just what marks him as an outsider here because for once in his life, it sure ain’t his skin color.

It might be his clothes or his general wide-eyed awe over all things Wakanda, but the school isn’t that big, and neither is Jabari. Sam’s money is on this being the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, or has at least heard of them.

Challa tags along to Sam’s Ancient Wakandan history class, and it’s like last year all over again. He has a warm hello for N'Jobu, the professor, the two of them gently bumping their foreheads together. It’s a greeting Rhodey told them, common among friends, but Sam hasn’t actually seen it in action yet. Again, the students don’t seem particularly surprised to see their prince just popping in on a random class, and Sam’s got to bite his lip to keep from smiling too wide, as Challa lounges in the chair next to Sam’s, front row and center.

They get lunch from the cafeteria at the base of the waterfall - _ “Here, the food is actually  _ edible _ , Sam. _ ” - and a few more people approach Challa as they wait in line. He knows their names, asks about their families or the specifics of whatever they are studying, but they call him Prince T’Challa. He introduces Sam as a student here from the US, but does not provide any details on their relationship. There’s something different about the way Challa holds himself, like he goes into full on prince mode,  _ on  _ in a way he wasn’t when he was hanging out in Sam’s shitty apartment or training in the mansion’s backyard with Ayo or out at a bar with the Barnes-Rogerses.

Although Sam’s seen flashes of royalty before in the way Challa moves, the way he talks, and the way he expects his requests to always be met, but this is Prince T’Challa in all his glory. Chin held high, posture impeccable, he is gracious and as good a listener as he’s always been, but when Challa talks to these students, he’s still keeping his distance, holding himself back.

“What?” Challa says when he notices Sam staring at him after he says goodbye to a kid who’s studying chemistry and working for her mother, the owner a local bakery that Challa frequented when he was a student here.

“Nothing,” Sam says, shrugging. “You’re just so regal right now. It’s hot.”

T’Challa rolls his eyes, bites back a smile, and insists on taking their lunch to eat outside on the quad by the waterfall. 

Sprawled out on the grass, Challa sits as close to Sam as possible without actually being in his lap. There’s a line somewhere here between prince out among his people and recent graduate delighted to be showing his boyfriend the old stomping grounds, and Sam’s not sure where it is. He’s got months to figure it out.

Luke and Claire wander over, looking so wary it’s immediately obvious that in the hours between now and Rhodey’s class this morning, they’ve figured out exactly who was waiting for Sam when class got out and they’re confused about it.

“Hello,” Challa says as they approach. “Are you friends of Sam’s? Please, join us.”

Claire’s eyes go wide - obviously expecting, like Sam, a much more Buckingham Palace kind of royalty - and when she looks to Luke he just shrugs and takes a seat in the grass, crossing his legs and digging through his backpack.

“This is Luke and Claire,” Sam says, but then he gets stuck on how to introduce his boyfriend, the future king.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Challa says, reaching out for a handshake. “I am T’Challa.”

“Hey.” Luke takes Challa’s hand and then goes back to his lunch, completely at ease.

Claire remains wide-eyed, shaking Challa’s hand in something of a daze. After clearing her throat a few times, she says, “So. Uh, you’re um.”

Because he’s a menace, Challa nods encouragingly at her, face polite and expectant, like he’s got no idea what Claire is struggling to ask, and Sam sighs. 

“Yeah, he’s the prince,” Sam says and the confirmation is enough to make Claire relax, smiling as she pulls out her own lunch.

“It’s true,” says Challa, smiling. “My full title in Wahili is much more impressive and lengthy, but prince will do.”

“Right,” says Claire, recovered from her brief panic over how to address the elephant sized prince in the room and back to her typical no-nonsense attitude that’s going to make her a hell of a medical professional one day. “So did you meet Sam sometime in the last week we’ve been here or…”

She looks pointedly at the distinct lack of space between Sam and Challa, the  _ or  _ in her question just hanging there for a long moment.

“No,” Challa says eventually, bumping his shoulder into Sam’s. “What a whirlwind romance that would’ve been, but no. We’ve known each other for awhile now. I spent some time in DC last year.”

Before Claire can ask for more details, Challa deftly changes the subject, asking them about their studies and how they’re adjusting to life so far in a different country. He even gets Luke talking, which Sam’s only managed a time or two. Claire’s the only one that seems to make it happen regularly.

They could be on the other side of the world right now, just hanging out on campus, talking about school, Challa warm pressed against his side.

Sam’s lunch is long gone and he’s keeping an eye on the time to make sure he does not have to sprint to his next class when Challa’s phone rings. He struggles to get it out of his pocket and frowns as he looks at the screen. Murmuring a quick, “Excuse me,” he stands as he answers. Before he gets to far away for Sam to overhead, he says, “Baba.”

“Wow,” says Claire as they all watch Challa prowl along the periphery of the field. A stray soccer ball heads his way from a pick up game, and he dribbles between his feet a few times before kicking it back, the ball flying through the air in a long, smooth arch.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, sounding a bit too dreamy for his liking. He braces himself to get bombarded with questions, but Claire just comments on how great T’Challa is and Luke wonders just how the hell the monarchy functions in Wakanda.

Luke can join the damn club. 

Challa’s only on the phone for a few minutes and when he jogs back over, he’s frowning and serious.

“Sam, a word?” he asks, even as he reaches down to pull Sam to his feet and away from all the groups sitting around on the quad.

“What’s up?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. Challa’s face is far from encouraging.

“Something’s come up,” he says with a sigh. Wringing his hands, Challa ducks his head, his expression utterly despondent. “I know I said I’d be here until the weekend, I’m needed back in Birnin Zana today.”

“Hey, man, that’s okay.” Sam reaches out, squeezing Challa’s shoulders and shaking him around a little until he doesn’t look so sad. “You’ve got your princely duties to take care of. I get it.”

“Yes, well I am still not ready to say goodbye to you yet,” Challa murmurs. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be.”

There’s not much Sam can say to that, not with his breath caught in throat and his heart rioting in his chest. Instead he just pulls Challa into a hug, kissing his temple as Challa wraps his arms around his waist.

“I’ll be back,” Challa whispers into Sam’s neck. “Mid week, hopefully?”

Sam takes a steps back, clearing his throat and managing a smile, even though he’s suddenly terrified that this goodbye will turn out to be as lengthy as their last one. “I’ll be here.”

Nodding, Challa gets his palm around the back of Sam’s neck, tugging him closer until they’re forehead to forehead. They stay like that for a few seconds, until Challa wrenches away and stalks off towards the elevators without another word.

Sam watches him go and realizes that this would be his life, if he moved here someday. It wouldn’t be hanging out in libraries and bickering about a history lecture. The life they were living last year as college students was even more temporary than their relationship.

Challa is a prince, actual living, breathing royalty, and he’ll lead a country someday. He’s going to be leaving a lot, his country always coming before anything else.

Sam’s got the next six months to figure out if that’s something he can handle.

* * *

 

With the blessing of the future king of Wakanda, Sam goes about the business of telling everyone that Challa is actually T’Challa, eldest son of King T’Chaka and heir to the Wakandan throne. (If Wakanda even has a literal throne. It probably doesn’t. This is not England.)

He decides on Skype over writing an email, just to see his friends faces when he drops the prince bomb. 

The Barnes-Rogerses are first, agreeing to get online the moment they are both home at the end of the day so Sam doesn’t have to stay up until the crack of dawn to talk of them. They chat a little, Steve filling him in on the latest washing machine drama taking place in their building and Bucky complaining about yet another 8AM class he signed up for this semester. Sam has a very hard time answering all their questions on Jabari and his dorm and the people and his classes.

“Ok,” Steve says, when Sam tries to explain the cliffside layout of the school and fails. “What’s going on? You’re acting weird. Is everything ok?”

So Sam tries to drop the prince bomb, but suddenly he’s unable to say it out loud. He bumbles around an explanation, but can’t actually bring himself to say “prince” or “king” or “Wakandan royalty.”

“Challa’s, well, he’s kinda a big deal? And he’s really busy doing stuff he probably can’t tell me about, working with his family business and learning from his father and everything,” Sam babbles. “But there’s this really big thing he didn’t tell me and then I found out when I got here.”

Steve’s frown deepens with every word and Bucky just gets steadily more blank. 

By the time Sam finally blurts the whole thing out, actual using the words ‘“royal” and “prince” and “his dad is the motherfucking king,” his roommates looks more confused than shocked.

Terrible bomb dropping. Sam’s really disappointed in himself.

“Huh,” says Bucky. “That’s cool.”

“Oh,” says Steve. “Nice.”

“Nice?” Sam hisses. “Cool? That’s all you’ve got to say? This is a big fucking deal! This is shocking! Why aren’t you shocked!”

“Sam, I honestly thought you were trying to tell us he was either a famous actor or running a drug cartel,” Steve says. “So prince is less shocking than that.”

“I thought you were going to say he was dying of cancer or something,” Bucky says. “Terrible job explaining, man.”

Sam hides his face in his hands and grumbles under his breath.

There is silence from the screen of his laptop for a few seconds until Steve says, “Wait, does this mean he’s going to be a king someday? Challa? The same guy who forgets how language works until he’s had four cups of coffee? Who spent most of his time in our dinky apartment last year?”

“Yes!” Sam says, waving his hands around.

“Holy shit,” Bucky says and that’s more like it.

Sam refines his approach when he tells America. He catches her online early in the morning, when she’s just getting home from a late night out. She’s a little tipsy, her cheeks flushed and a few curls escaping from the bun on the top of her head.

For America, Sam just says it straight out. As she opens her mouth to say hello, Sam says, “So Challa is not actually just some student, his real name is T’Challa and he’s the prince. As in his dad is the King of Wakanda. As in he’s going to rule this country someday.” 

America does not disappoint. Her mouth drops open, her eyes go comically wide, and she says, “Wait, what?”

“Yup. You heard me. Prince T’Challa.”

America says  _ what _ again, holding out the syllable for a full ten seconds. Then she squeals into a pillow, muffling the sound to keep from waking her host family.

When she finally gets a hold of herself she looks at Sam through her screen and says, “So this is it. The reason for all the weird drama. You guys are my favorite couple. It’s better than TV.”

Sam saves his Ma for last, holding off until the weekend so they don’t have to worry about the time change making it too late or too early for one of them. He’s in his dorm, struggling to write an essay in Wahili for his literature class, when she comes online.

The video call connects, and her face fills up the screen, smiling and familiar. 

“Hey,” he says, standing from his desk with his laptop and laying down on his bed so he can stretch out his knee.

“Sammy, baby,” she coos, reaching out both her hands like she’s going to come right through his screen to pull him towards her and kiss both his cheeks. 

Sam’s only been gone for a couple weeks, but they’ve managed to Skype once, in addition to their regular emails. The last time he actually saw her face was a few days into their week long stay in Ghana. He’d just gotten back to his hotel after visiting Elmina Castle and Sam felt the weight in his bones of all the people who died there and all the ones who were stolen from there. He thought about the lucky ones dying in the windowless room he stood in, the rest packed into ships like so much chattel, and the fate awaiting them and their children if they made it across the Middle Passage. He thought about three hundred years of struggle that somehow culminated in Sam going back to Africa, to stand where they did, at the very beginning of it.

Back at the hotel, Sam had immediately Skyped his Ma because a hug wasn’t an option.

This conversation is sure to be less fraught than that one.

“I’m going to tell you all about my classes and the school,” Sam says before Ma can ask. “But first I need to tell you about Challa.”

Just with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips, Ma manages to look both completely unsurprised and faintly disapproving.

He gives her the full story, his vague plans to contact Challa once he got to Wakanda and the photograph on Banou’s desk. Challa’s modern tree house and what they finally talked about, how they might have saved each other a lot of heartbreak if Sam would’ve just said anything at all about what he wanted. How Challa called Sam his boyfriend and how Sam’s probably going to have to meet the king one of these days.

“You look happy,” Ma says when Sam’s done.

“Yeah?” Sam says, grinning.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I am. For now. But we’ve got some big decisions we’ll have to make at some point here.”

“Yeah,” Ma says again.

“Would you really be happy if I moved this far away?”

“I’d miss you,” Ma says. “But, Sam, baby, I’ve been mentally preparing myself for your eventual move to Wakanda since the first weekend I met that boy. Who is apparently a prince.”

Sam lets out a big breath, jostling the computer on his lap as he leans back against his pillows. “Really?”

“Really,” Ma nods. “If this is what you want your life to be, then I support you.”

Sam blinks at her, because it's pretty much the opposite of what she said the last time he went abroad. Of course, that involved the risk of him actually dying in a war she had strong moral objections too.

“But,” she says, and Sam tenses up, ready for the protests he was expecting from her. “You’ve got to promise me that if you decide to move there, it’ll be for you too, not just for T’Challa. He’s a prince, and you’ve got to really understand what that would mean for you before you decide.”

“I know,” Sam says, thinking about watching Challa walk away. “I know.”

“You have to find something else for yourself out there.”

“Well, yeah,” Sam says. “But figuring out what the hell I want to do with my life after I graduate was always going to be an issue, even before I met Challa.”

“True,” she agrees. “I still say you’d make a great professor, Sam. I would know.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“So tell me about this school of yours.” On his screen, Ma settles down, tucked against the arm of her sofa. “Is it really built into a cliff? Do you have pictures?”

* * *

 

Exactly twelve minutes after ending the call, Sam gets an email from his Ma with no subject and just a couple lines of text.

_ How could you let me make the future King of Wakanda sleep on the world’s worst pull out couch??????????? _

* * *

 

Life settles.

Sam goes to class, studies in the library, reads on the quad, all things that are very familiar even in the distinctly foreign Wakandan landscape. There are days when his homesickness sits tight in his chest, but his ma is usually a Skype call away and there is always some new wonder to explore to distract him. 

Plus Challa’s here, a roving piece of home that Sam is now able to love freely and fully. 

With Luke and Claire, he gets more comfortable navigating Jabari. The treehouse bar becomes their go to spot to unwind at the end of a long day. 

Every few weeks Sam will cook big group dinners for everyone in the program in the dorm kitchens, Rhodey included, under the condition that they all do the grocery shopping together, too, insisting that only Wahili is spoken at the open air market in the center of town.

Outside of the other Americans he came here with, Sam makes a few Wakandan friends in his botany class. Like in DC, most of the students are younger than him, but a fair few are much older. Bueze and Tilda are a married couple in their fifties, back to school now that their kids are grown up and they’ve got the time to turn the thriving gardens in their backyard into an actual business. They like to fuss over Sam, asking every afternoon their class is meeting in the jungle topside if Sam got a good lunch. 

Kids in all his classes want to ask him a million questions about the US, and Sam answers everything in exchange for them practicing Wahili with him. His vocabulary is skewing too far in the direction of dense academic jargon and vegetables, so they help him with pop culture lingo, slang, and idioms. He’s thankful that most people at the school are multilingual, because he might be doing well in his literature class he’s taking in Wahili, but he doesn’t know enough of the language to feel like he can have a personality when he speaks it yet. 

The first time he manages to tell a joke in Wahili, just naturally with the flow of conversation, it’s going to be a very big deal.

Even when Challa’s not around, he ends up spending a good deal of his time between classes on campus with Shuri. She finds him in the library, on the quad, or in the cafeteria, content to sit near him and study quietly or vent to him about whatever is going wrong with her latest invention. Occasionally, she’ll allude to some device she’s created that can cause a great deal of pain with very little effort on her part, but grinning and agreeing with her seems like the correct reaction in these moments, and she keeps on coming back.

Eventually, his general awe and shock over all things Wakanda wears off a little. He can do the walk from his dorm to the university without getting to distracted by snapping turtles or colorful birds. Although he still has to go stand on the glass observation deck every morning before going down to his classes, he can keep it under five minutes now.

Beyond the natural beauty, Sam likes it here. The people are warm, the culture prizing collaboration and curiosity in a way that America doesn’t. 

When Sam sits his first test in his ancient Wakandan history class, he’s shocked into speechlessness as around him everyone pulls their chairs close, books out on tables and heads bent towards each other, discussions being held as everyone writes. When someone has a question on a date or name or event, four other voices provide the answer, and no less than three debates rage on at any given moment. When the whole class falls down the rabbit hole of a completely different topic than the one they are being tested on, N'Jobu just smiles and says, “Good work, good work.”

It’s a genuine pursuit of knowledge, something Sam’s never really seen over the course of his academic life, not until Challa started sitting in on history classes at GW just for fun and bickering with Wheatley.

When Sam calls Challa after his class lets out, he says, “I just want to be in college forever, man. I just want to keep learning like this  _ forever _ .”

“You could, you know. Do you think people like N'Jobu do not learn even as they teach every day?” Challa replies, sounding a whole lot like Sam’s ma, who has taken to marveling over the joys of teaching college, both in her emails and on their Skype calls.

Pulling a Challa, Sam starts hanging out with N'Jobu a couple times a week, sometimes in his office and sometimes tagging along for walks near the river. N'Jobu talks about his research, giving Sam further reading for fun. (The whole extra school for fun thing is definitely not unique to Challa, but is apparently a cornerstone to Wakandan culture at large.)

When Sam admits he’s been thinking about writing his thesis next year on the impact of Wakandan isolation on African LGBT communities, but hasn’t actually narrowed down the topic much, N'Jobu sends him a file including hundreds of first hand accounts - photocopies of centuries old journal entries, recordings of oral histories, dence biographical accounts of every queer Wakandan ruler going back a thousand years.

“It’s like twenty Christmases all at once,” Sam tells Challa. “It’s like Nelson Mandela giving you a birthday present! Oh my god, I’m going to cry. Like actually fucking tears of joy.”

Challa laughs and insists on going through everything with Sam. When Challa’s in town, they read each other accounts of gay kings and queer families like bedtime stories. They do the same during their nightly phone call when Challa’s in Birnin Zana.

Sam’s happy in Wakanda, more relaxed than he’s ever been, even if he was a relatively happy kid before he enlisted. 

It takes Sam a solid two months to realize the usual tension sitting between his shoulder blades - something he’s so used to living with at home - is gone. The low key awareness that at any given moment the racism so embedded in every aspect of American society could flare up and hurt him, hurt someone he loves, hurt someone who looks like him does not exist here.

Luke says it best, as he is settling down next to Sam in the shade of a tree on the quad to catch a few minutes of shut eye between classes. “Don’t have to worry about getting shot for Napping While Black, here,” he says, closing his eyes and resting with both hands behind his head. “Pretty much everyone is always doing everything while Black, here. It’s nice.”

Sam murmurs his agreement and settles down for a nap of his own.

The general lack of white supremacy is comforting, and so is the lack of ocean, currently separating him from Challa. 

It might not be exactly like last year, when they were essentially living together, but it’s so much better than last semester, when Sam’s default mood for starting the day could best be described as the emotional equivalent of a lethargic shrug. Last semester was a whole lot of  _ meh _ , but now Sam’s glowing, thriving, really living. 

And that might not all be down to Challa, but he certainly helps.

If Challa’s in town, Sam’s not spending the night in the dorms. Sam gets razzed by the other kids in his program, and more than a few intrusive questions about his relationship with the prince, but he channels his inner Challa, giving only vague answers or none at all.

At first, Sam thought Challa was coming to Jabari so much just for Sam, but Challa assures him that even without Sam here, he’d be splitting his time between here and the capitol. Shuri is only seventeen, and no one - Shuri, Challa, King T’Chaka, Queen Ramonda - wanted her totally on her own in Challa’s big empty house.

When he Skypes with his ma, she keeps on telling him he looks happy and Sam replies, “Just working on finding stuff for myself here. Turns out, there’s a lot.”

* * *

It rains for the entire month of March, which Rhodey all warned them about but Sam really failed to take seriously. The walk to school gets a whole lot less pleasant, and everyone starts catching the shuttle from the main square to campus. The thing is rarely used when its dry, overly crowded when its not, and Sam misses starting his mornings with a walk.

Even his botany class is forced inside, content to look at projections of plants instead of the real thing in the sopping wet jungle above them.

The library remains packed at all times, one of the few places with good enough lighting for everyone to trick themselves into thinking they’re actually out in the sunshine.

At the end of the month, campus shuts down for a week. Apparently it’s traditional for students to travel during the monsoon break, going north, east, or south, where the weather is drastically less wet. The Congo to the west is even wetter during March, although Sam doesn’t understand how that’s possible.

Luke and Claire, along with a couple of the other more bearable kids in the program, are going into Tanzania for the week, but Sam - much to Challa’s continued consternation and insistence that bumming around with the country's favorite prince will somehow detract from Sam’s time studying abroad - is not among them. 

Instead, he’s on the road to Birnin Zana, sitting next to Challa in some sort of Wakandan SUV with a completely transparent roof and fancy holographic control panels. Sam’s still not used to watching the torrential rain beat down on the roof, even halfway through the journey.  

Okoye’s driving, Ayo seated next to her. The pair is apparently in whatever city Challa’s in. There is a house somewhere near Challa’s in Jabari for whatever Dora Milaje are on duty, but they are much less concerned by Challa going off on his own here than they were in DC, and Sam hasn’t seen all that much of them, unless they’re invited to Challa’s for dinner. 

Behind them is Shuri, stretched out across the bench seat in the back of the vehicle. She’s got some sort of robot glove on one hand, a screwdriver in the other, and occasionally she hits a wire and sends sparks flying a little too close to the back of Sam’s head for comfort.

Challa sits next to him in the middle row of bench seats, holding Sam’s hand in his lap and pouting out at the window. For the third time since they hit the road, Challa says, “You should still go to Tanzania at some point, even if you are missing out on experiencing it with your friends.”

Sam groans, tugging on Challa’s hand to get him to stop staring mournfully at the rain. “T’Challa, babe, I’ve told you. I’d rather spend a whole week with you. Tanzania ain’t going anywhere.”

“I know,” Challa says, still pouting but at least he’s looking at Sam. “But you won’t get to go with your friends. And this is a terrible time of year to visit Birnin Zana. Everyone spends all their time underground and the whole city is in a fog.”

From the front seat, Okoye snorts. “I think he’ll be plenty impressed with the underground portions of the city, my prince.”

“Yes, but it is still not an ideal first impression,” Challa mutters.

“Wait,” Sam says, leaning forward to look Okoye. “Parts of the city are underground?”

“Large swaths of it,” Ayo says. “If you like the Jabari libraries, you are sure to adore Birnin Zana.”

“There’s more than one library?” Sam asks.

“Hush, Ayo,” Shuri says, doing something to the robot glove that makes the metal screech. “He’s only allowed access to one. There’s no need to be sharing all our secrets with a westerner, now is there?”

“Huh,” says Sam.

“If you think our ancestors did not learn from what happened to the Library of Alexandria you would be wrong, my friend,” Challa says. “It’s difficult to burn down a series of different caves, especially when you don’t know how many or where to find them.”

Sam’s got to close his eyes for a few seconds. History feels so much closer here, the ripples of events he studied from a distance still affecting so much about this country and continent, and each new example of this never fails to leave Sam feeling bowled-over, awestruck and insufficient in equal measure.

He gives himself a few moments to digest that ancient Wakandans knew what happened in Alexandria, and put their libraries underground because of it, before he goes back to watching the rainfall splatter on the transparent roof. 

For the past ten minutes, the incline of the road before them has been steadily rising, and visibility wasn’t great before, but the higher they get, the denser the fog becomes. Sam knew there were mountains somewhere, although no Wakandans are overly interested in sharing the geographic details of the country with any foreigners, so he figures that’s what they’re climbing now.

Beside him, Challa unbuckles his seatbelt and slides across the bench seat until he’s pressed into Sam’s side. He loops the middle seat belt around his waist, pulls Sam’s arm over his shoulders, and then wedges himself firmly into Sam’s armpit, head tilted back on Sam’s shoulder so he can whisper into Sam’s ear.

“It’s a pity you’ll be leaving when your semester ends, missing the peak of the dry season.” Challa’s voice is low, his breath warm on Sam’s neck, and Sam turns towards him slightly, squeezing Challa’s knee.

“Well,” he replies, knowing that this moment isn’t actually private, despite the whispering. Challa’s little sister is behind them, the secret service in front. “The only reason I have to leave the country at the end of term is because my visa is expiring.”

“Oh really?” Challa’s bouncing in his seat, forgetting to keep his voice down. “Paperwork is the only reason you’d leave before the summer?”

Sam shrugs. “Pretty much. I was planning on staying in Africa for an extra few weeks, anyway. Working my way south, flying home from Cape Town. But I’d definitely spend the summer with you, if I could. You stayed longer in the US for me, afterall. And--”

Challa cuts him off with a kiss, his hand sliding along Sam’s jaw before brushing against his ear and curling around the back of his neck to hold him close. Sam sinks into the kiss, forgetting for a moment that Challa’s sister is a few feet away, forgetting that he hasn’t actually decided if he can uproot his whole life to live here permanently, forgetting everything that makes this complicated and hard. 

Beneath his mouth, Challa’s lips are smooth, and on his neck, Challa’s fingertips are calloused. 

“We are driving over a mountain pass in less than ideal conditions,” Okoye drawls from the front seat. “If you fog up these windows and make the visibility even worse, we could all plummet to our deaths.”

With a final kiss to the corner of Sam’s lips, Challa sighs and pulls away, settling back with his head on Sam’s shoulder. Kissed dazed and speechless, Sam can only hold Challa closer and press his nose into Challa’s hair.

From behind them, Shuri’s head pops up. She hooks her chin over the edge of the seat and smiles at Sam. “If you do end up going to Cape Town this summer can I come? I haven’t been anywhere exciting in the longest time.”

Challa hums. “We shall see. Along with Tanzania, Cape Town is not going anywhere.”

* * *

 

They continue to drive through the fog, and Challa stars narrating the views they’d be seeing if they took this trip at a different time of year. Birnin Zana is apparently located in a giant crater, the caldera of ancient volcanoes that burned out a million years ago and now stretches some twenty odd miles. Wakandans settled here during the Bantu Migration sometime between 500 BC and 500 AD, and Challa’s people have been expanding the caves they found on the edge of the caldera ever since. 

As they crest the edge of the mountains they actually break out of the fog long enough for Sam to see down into the crater on the other side. The metal spires of half a dozen skyscrapers stick up above the clouds, but the remainder of the city stays hidden as they start the descent, driving over switchbacks. 

“Beyond the city are plains, several lakes, and on clear days you can see the whole circle of the caldera from up here,” Challa murmurs, running his forefinger through the condensation on the window like he can draw out the image of Sam. “It’s a riot of color after the rains, all tall green grass and bright flowers, everything in bloom.”

“You’ll show me?” Sam asks.

“Of course.”

Eventually, the road cuts back through the mountain and they’re in a well lit tunnel. It’s so different from the gloomy world outside that Sam has to blink until his eyes adjust. The road flattens out again, and suddenly they are out of the tunnel and back outside, abruptly breaking through until they are in the city proper. Structures are built around craggy rocks or right into them, the city this close to the mountain half in caves and half out. 

They curve around what Challa says is a massive park in the center for the city before cutting back towards the rocky edge of the mountain.

“Ah,” says Challa as they approach the gleaming spires of what has to be the palace, half in the mountain, half out of it, flanked on either side by towering, gleaming stone panthers, and rising up out of the mist like something truly ancient and royal. “Home sweet home.”

* * *

 

Challa’s parents aren’t actually in the capital for the first part of the week. A dam cracked somewhere near a farming community, and the king and queen are off dealing with the flooding, making sure everyone affected is somewhere safe and dry for the remainder of the short wet season and ensuring that all the plans to rebuild are in place for when the rains stop.

Sam is privately a little greatful, not for the flooding but at least for the few extra days to check out Birnin Zana without the complete freak out that is going to accompany meeting his boyfriend’s parents -  _ the goddamn king and queen _ \- for the first time.

Challa’s private apartments are high in a tower, suspended in one of the spires of rock that make up the foothills but still connect to the main palace through a labyrinth of tunnels and bridges. His rooms here are just as opulent as his house in Jabari, but less modern. 

Everything here has some priceless value and deep meaning. The art on the wall - big, vibrant canvases that play with texture and light - were done by Challa’s late mother. The carved stone figurine sitting on the desk was a gift to an 11th century Wakandan Queen from the ruler of Great Zimbabwe. The stack of solid gold bars behind a protective glass case on the bookshelf were apparently distributed by Mansa Musa himself, during his great 14th century pilgrimage across Northern Africa to Mecca, part of the immense wealth he passed out like candy on his way.

Just chilling in Challa’s fucking bookshelf is a small fraction of the gold that destabilized the economies of the entire region for a decade, a King from Mali gave away so many tons of it.

Sam’s got to lie down for a while. Challa presses a cold washcloth to his forehead and mostly doesn’t laugh at him.

When Sam gets it together enough to tell Challa that he’s beyond grateful that these priceless pieces of history are here instead of moldering in a storage room beneath the British Museum, Challa kisses him for a long time.

Although most people spend the majority of the rainy months inside the cave sections of Birnin Zana, the city is no less zibrant and bustling. Challa gets Sam out on the streets, Ayo and Okoye out of their uniforms and trailing along behind them, and Sam can hardly tell they are inside a mountain in most spots. He looks up, but can’t see the top of the cavern and just ends up blinking against the artificial sun lamps that keep the place feelling bright and cheery rather than cold and dark.

Sam’s so busy looking up - at the skyscrapers stretching up inside a mountain, some of them continuing right through the rock face and outside, the murals painted on the stone facades of buildings, towering sculptures carved from wood - that the only thing that keeps him from stepping right off the sidewalk into traffic is Challa, holding his hand.

They walk around for awhile, Challa pointing out his favorite spots and telling stories with input from Okoye and Ayo. Sam notices that the way people interact with Challa is different in the big city. Although no one is outwardly any less friendly than people in Jabari, there is more distance between Challa and them. They are less familiar with him. 

For the most part they’re given a fairly wide berth -  _ “It’s polite, Sam,”  _ Challa explained in Jabari when Sam asked how he manages to go out without getting mobbed. _ “They don’t want to disturb me when I’m not acting in some sort of official capacity, unless there is some urgent need.” -  _ and most of the people that Sam makes eye contact with smile big at him and nod respectfully at Challa, but some don’t.

Sam doesn’t quite know what to make of it, but Challa seems perfectly content to hold his hand out here for all of Wakanda to see, so he’s not going to worry about it.

They meet the infamous Nakia for dinner, the girl who got Challa into all sorts of trouble when they were kids and seems equally mischievous now. According to Challa, she’s not in the country often, her job somewhere between diplomat and spy, and they’re lucky to be catching her now, a few days before she’s set to fly out to somewhere Sam can’t know about, to do something Sam probably doesn’t want to know about.

She kisses both Sam’s cheeks in greeting when Challa introduces them at the restaurant, and then sighs as she turns to Challa, holding his face between her hands.

“I suppose your gentlemen friend here means all our fathers’ hopes for us to grow up and have a politically convenient marriage are well and truly dashed now,” she says, shaking her head mournfully.

For a moment, Sam’s stomach drops and he thinks he missed some very big memo about arranged marriages in Wakanda or something, but Challa just laughs. 

“Oh, it’s Sam’s doing is it?” Challa asks.

“What else could it be?” Nakia asks, patting Challa’s jaw. “Not the job of my dreams that keeps me out of the country more often than I’m in it, surely. Or your overwhelming preference for men.”

Challa grins. “Surely not.”

Nakia swings her gaze towards Sam, flashing him a lazy grin. “Sam, did T’Challa tell you that he saw fit to stand on his chair during a dinner with our two families when we were thirteen, right around the time my father couldn’t stop mentioning his hopes for that politically convenient marriage, to announce his overwhelming preference for men?”

“He did not,” Sam says, smiling wide now that he’s in on the joke.

“Well, that’s a pity because it was glorious,” Nakia continues. “Queen Romanda just said, ‘That’s nice, dear. Get your feet off the upholstery.’”

“And my father said, ‘Too bad you don’t have sons, Kifeda. Please, pass the cassava.’” 

“And  _ my _ father looked like he’d swallowed his own tongue? Ah, what a meal.” Nakia pats Challa’s jaw twice more and then drops her hands to tuck her hand through the crook of Sam’s arm, leading him towards their table. “I have stories even better than this one, Sam. Much more embarrassing.”

“Oh good,” Sam says. “Finally a little payback for all the embarrassing stories my sister told him about me.”

They get drinks after, meeting a few other of Shuri’s friends, including W’Kabi who is polite to Sam, although a little wary. He does something political, working with Challa, maybe advising him, but before Sam can ask any questions, Shuri groans and says, “No palace talk. No talk of anything event close to work related.” The subject changes back to slightly embarrassing but over all endearing childhood stories about Challa, so Sam can’t exactly complain.

When a band comes on, crowded onto the small raised stage in the corner, Challa leans back against Sam’s chest, watching avidly and smiling slightly. It starts with a woman alone, a singular, haunting voice so powerful the entire bar falls silent. Sam can’t understand the words, but it’s beautiful, both mournful and hopeful, and something about it has Sam holding Challa a little closer. 

The drummers come in next. Sam taps out the complicated beat once he gets it on Challa’s chest, right over his heart, keeping it up until Challa grins at him over his shoulder, stretching back for a quick kiss before the music once more has his full and undivided attention.

* * *

 

“So was that a typical night in a the life of Prince T’Challa of Wakanda?” Sam asks as they make unsteady progress toward the palace, winding through quiet streets. The bright sunlamps suspended from the ceiling of the caves are constantly adjusted to match whatever the sun is doing outside, and it’s long since set. 

Sam only had a couple drinks, but Challa had a few more, and now its only Sam holding his hand that’s keeping him on the sidewalk.

A block or so behind them, Okoye and Ayo are also holding hands, their gait much more steady than Challa’s. Sam never so much as caught a glimpse of them, but they’ve apparently been nearby for the whole night.

“Typical?” Challa deep voice reverberates off stone buildings, as do his much higher pitched giggles. “I would not say typical. Perhaps such nights happen once a month? More, I suppose, if Shuri is in the city for more than three consecutive days. She is a bad influence, Sam. Don’t listen to a word she says.”

“Too late,” Sam replies. When he tugs on Challa’s hand, Challa stumbles a little closer, an excellent excuse for Sam to get his arm around his waist instead. All in the name of keeping him upright and walking in a relatively straight line, of course. “I now am always going to know that you were terrified of frogs growing up.”

“It’s their eyes,” Challa says, shuddering against Sam’s side.

Sam presses a kiss to Challa’s temple and turns them left at Challa’s slurred instruction.

“So what is a typical night in the life of Prince T’Challa?” Sam asks.

“There’s no such thing as typical,” Challa murmurs. “Once or twice I have some royal obligation. My father and I have a weekly dinner, but if I have any choice in the matter, I’ll be in Jabari with Shuri.”

“Yeah? That’s your favorite place to be?”

“My sister and my studies. And my boyfriend, too, at least for now. What could be better? Well,” Challa continues, answering his own question. “You here permanently. That would be better.”

“I’m thinking about it,” Sam assures him. They turn right again, Challa directing Sam with a lazy flick of his hand.

“That’s all I can ask,” Challa says.

“I’m leaning towards it,” Sam confesses, well aware that this is not an ideal time for a serious conversation. It’s possible that the alcohol is affecting him more than he realized. He thought he learned his lesson with konyagi the couple times Ayo brought it around in DC, but tonight it was disguised in fruity cocktails.

At Sam’s pronouncement, Challa stumbles a little more. “Truely?”

“I think so?” Sam says as they continue to walk. “Like, when I think about a future I can picture it here easily. So easily I can’t really picture it anywhere else. But it’s still a big decision. And it’s not just my decision. It’s yours too.”

“I decided a year ago, Sam.”

“ _ Challa _ .”

“It’s true. I won’t pressure you or insist you decide even by the time you leave, but I am not going to pretend I didn’t decide about you a long time ago.”

Sam’s got no idea what to say to that, so he just presses forward with a conversation that really should done on a full nights sleep with no alcohol in anyone’s system. “I just don’t totally know what to expect, you know? You’re a prince, Challa. What does that mean for whoever you’re dating?”

“Nothing,” Challa says, tone stern and downright princely. He shakes Sam a little, punctuating his point. “ _ Nothing _ , Sam. Beyond more scrutiny in public and being the frequent subject of gossip, nothing would be required of you. There are no duties you’d have to do, or obligations. And although I’d be grateful if you’d join me for social events, especially the tedious ones, you would not have to. Whatever kind of life you’d want to live here, you could.”

“N’Jobu’s been hinting at graduate work for me. I keep having to remind him that I’m leaving at the end of term and then he just frowns at me. Talk about specifically expressive eyebrows,” Sam says.

Challa laughs. “It’s true. And he has been looking to expand the history department. If you’re not careful, he’ll be grooming you to teach the modern history classes he has on ofter currently.”

“If I’m  _ careful _ ? More like if I’m lucky. You really think the university would want me to continue there? Does that even happen with people in the study abroad program?”

“Hmm.” They’re nearing the gate to the palace now, and Challa deliberately slows their pace. “A whole university cannot have sex with you to prove how it would want you, but give me time. I’ll find someway to convince you of the great value and perspective you could bring to the school as an educator.”

That shouldn’t make Sam blush, but it does.

* * *

 

Sam walks down the brightly lit hallway like he’s being escorted to his own execution. For once, it’s not raining, the sun peeking out through the clouds and flowing through each massive window. Even the carpet and drapes are too cheery to be tolerated, with all their rich colors and bold patterns. 

The double doors at the end of the hall hold Sam’s doom and this hallway is no where near long enough.

If he could hold Challa’s hand, that might help a little with his fear, but his hands are currently sweating too much for that. He wipes them on his jeans -  _ jeans _ , Challa made him wear  _ jeans _ to meet a king - and drags his feet. 

Challa gets five feet in front of Sam, nearly to those damn double doors, before he realizes they are no longer walking side by side.

When Challa turns to look at Sam, frozen in place five feet away, he looks at the ceiling for a moment and then sighs with his whole body.

“This is terrible,” Sam says.

“Hmm.”

“Horrible.”

“Hmm.”

“The fucking  _ worst _ .” 

Shaking his head, Challa looks at the ceiling again.

“Babe.” Sam crosses the distance between them, fisting his hands in the loose fabric of Challa’s black tunic. “How offended would he be if we pushed back this meeting, like a week?”

Challa raises his eyebrows. “A week?”

“Or even just a day.”

“Are you going to be less nervous in a week or a day?” he asks, far too sensibly for Sam’s current mood.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Sam stays silent.

“As I thought.” Challa bends at the waist and kisses Sam, slowly, thoroughly, until the tension draines from his shoulders, his arms fall to his sides and then find Challa’s narrow hips. Until the whole thing seems less dire than it did a minute ago. Against his lips, Challa whispers. “Best to get it over with, darling.”

“Would it be a bad first impression if I puked all over him?” Sam asks, even though the kissing really was reassuring. “Your father and best friend and King of Wakanda?”

“Yes.”

Groaning, Sam drops his head to rest on Challa’s shoulder.

“Now you know how I felt when I met your mother,” Challa says. “And you wouldn’t even let me bring gifts. I had to sneak a gift in there with the museum tour.”

“You were not this nervous meeting my mother,” Sam mumbles.

“Of course I was!”

Sam lifts his head to stare at Challa. “No.”

“Sam, your mother is as important to you as my father is to me. Of course I was nervous.”

“Sure,” Sam says, pleased that Challa gets that. She might not be the actual, literal queen of anything, but Darlene Wilson is important. And so is her approval of Challa. Sam spent too long ignoring her good advice, and if Sam can manage to trick the king into liking him half as much as his ma likes Challa, then he’s golden. “But you were not  _ this _ nervous to meet her. Like, you only had the scary parent part. You didn’t have the star struck part.”

“Star struck?” Challa gets a little furrow between his brow when he’s puzzled. Sam wants to kiss it, but that will have to wait.

“I think I read my first biography on your dad when I was thirteen,” Sam whispers, glancing at the closed double doors, knowing the king in question is in the room beyond.

“Hmm.” Challa clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “And yet you did not recognize his son even as you made fun of his Halloween costume.”

“I was not making fun of it. Your stupidly gorgeous face had me flustered!”

“I do like cats,” Challa informs him. “Just so you know. Panthers in particular.”

“Challa, babe, you are not helping. Should I have brought your parents gifts? Is that like a Wakandan thing?” Sam hides his face in his hands. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.”

“You need not worry, Sam,” Challa says, tugging Sam’s hands away from his face. He takes both Sam’s hand in his, gently pulling him towards those doors. Sam takes one step, and then another. “Your presence is gift enough. Although if you wanted you could give my father that paper you wrote on him last year.”

“Holy shit.” Sam stops dead in his tracks. “If you show him that, I will straight up murder you. I don’t care if Okoye would skin me alive afterwards, you will be murdered. I can’t fucking believe I had you proofread a paper I wrote on your own father. What the fuck, Challa.”

Challa laughs, big and bright, until Shuri throws open the doors at the end of the hall to check on them and then rushes them into the room for lunch.

* * *

 

Sam’s glad Challa talked him out of wearing his nice slacks and a button up. 

This is an informal family meal, and Sam would look like even more of an idiot if he got all fancy with it. Shuri and Challa wear what they always do, and while Queen Ramonda looks a little more regal in a long black dress, her white locs tumbling around her bare shoulders, King T’Chaka appears to be wearing the Wakandan version of a Hawaiian shirt.

It’s hard to be overly intimidated by a dude rocking the bad dad fashion, bright floral shirt tucked into pants with more pockets than anyone could possibly need, or so Sam tells himself as the king stands and moves towards Sam, smile gentle and hand extended.

Sam’s palms are soping again, but wiping his hand first or just not taking the king’s hand at all would be worse, so Sam clenches his jaw to keep from squealing, hopes his forced smile is not too creepy, and shakes King T’Chaka’s hand.

Should Sam bow? No one mentioned bowing. This is not England. Bowing suddenly seems like an overly British thing to do. And Sam’s never seen anyone bow at Challa, just nod their heads respectfully. Sam could probably manage a nod, so long as he’s careful not to nod too much because that’s getting into bowing territory and this is not England.

Sam tilts his head slightly as the king clasps his hand in both his own. His smile is warm, like his son’s, and he looks like the kindly, older version of Challa. Sam’s got no idea where Challa got that haughty edge of refinement to him, but it doesn’t look like it’s here.

“Sam,” says King T’Chaka. “It is so good to meet you. We are so thrilled to have you here and we have heard so very much about you.”

Before Sam can reply - his mouth is open, who knows what is about to come out, hopefully not something about cats - the queen slides up to her husband and says, “Almost too much about you at times, the same stories and facts over and over. You know our T’Challa. He does tend to gush.”

“I do not.” Sam jumps when Challa presses close to his side, long fingers wrapping around Sam’s wrist.

“Do not deny it, my son,” Queen Ramonda says, smiling. “You gush. It is both endearing and tedious.”

“You’re not letting the boy get a word in,” King T’Chaka says.

And Sam thought he meant Challa, but then the entire royal family is looking at Sam expectantly. 

“Oh, uh,” says Sam blinking at them. 

It shouldn’t be a revelation, but this is just a family. These are his boyfriend’s parents, gently teasing their son and trying to get to know Sam. Sure, the royalty thing is still a trip and a half, but underneath all that, this is meeting the parents. People do this short of thing all the time. Sam’s got this.

“Hi,” Sam says. “It sure is great to meet you both. I’m just so thankful that I get to be here, to see your country and learn your history. And to spend time with your son.”

It seems like a good thing to say, the king and queen sharing a little half smile, but then Shuri appears from somewhere. “Just their son?” she asks. “I thought we were lunch buddies on campus, Sam. Frankly, I’ve never felt so betrayed.”

Everyone laughs at that, and it takes Sam’s tension down a notch or two.

The nearby table is setup buffet style with fruit, roasted vegetables and various cured meats. When Sam holds his plate, his hand is steady and not overly damp. He still stick close to Challa as everyone settles on a series of low sofas, some sort of seat-bean bag chair hybrid. 

During the meal, Sam doesn’t have to do much besides eat his food and smile when the conversation calls for it. Challa throws an arm around Sam’s shoulders and Sam is almost able to relax.

Of course, King T’Chaka is as charming as his son, even under the guises of his dad demeanor, and he effectively lures Sam into a false sense of security. 

The moment everyone has set their plates aside, the king turns the full force of his attention on Sam, and the guy might not be overtly royal like the rest of his family, but he seems like every bit the king now, mind sharp, all cunning strategy.

“So Sam,” he says, apropos of nothing. “I’ve heard that you wrote a lovely essay on me.”

Wide eyed and palms sweating, Sam can do nothing but stare at the king.

“I will not ask to read it, not now.” He smiles like he’s done Sam some great favor, and Sam finds himself nodding along. “But you simply must tell me what you’re working on now. I am assuming you have something more recent you’ve written with you here? I will look at that too, I should think.” 

With a single glance over his shoulder at Challa - who is biting his lip, holding back his laughter - Sam takes a deep breath and says, “So, there was this 9th century queen, right? And she had this wife.”

Somehow, by the time they are all parting ways for the afternoon, Sam’s got King T’Chaka’s email address and, despite his die-hard conviction that the king would never read the paper Sam wrote on him last year, Sam’s given him a promise to email the thing, the moment he gets back to his computer.

* * *

 

“Sam.” N’Jobu calls out at the end of class, standing on his tiptoes to find Sam’s gaze over the heads of all the students standing, laughing, chatting, packing up their bags as they move towards the door.  The sun has been out steadily for three whole days - an all time record since February - and everyone is antsy, tired of classroom walls and ready to be outside. “Walk with me?”

It’s not an unusual request, so Sam nods and packs up his bag, hanging back while a few students speak to N’Jobu on their way out. When the room empties, N’Jobu nods towards the door and Sam holds it open for him, following him towards the elevators.

Instead of going down towards the quad and the river where they normally walk, N’Jobu sends them up, to the third floor from the surface. Sam’s never seen floors one through four, doesn't even think his student ID would let him select those elevator buttons.

Sam tires to hide his wide eyed shock, in case his behavior will clue N’Jobu into the fact that Sam’s not allowed here.

“Come,” N’Jobu says, when the doors open. He smirks at Sam, like he’s well aware that this is a restricted area and that Sam is freaking out about it.

Sam follows N’Jobu through a series of tunnels, turning sharply and frequently, as they go deeper underground, away from the cliff face. When Rhodey said the university was not a cave dwelling, he must not have been thinking about the third floor because Sam is surrounded by stone; floor, ceilings, walls. Sam can see the rough edges in the rock, where some long ago Wakandan carved out where he’s walking by hand. 

The room opens up eventually, directly into library stacks. There is no great room here, just rows and rows of texts, the occasional interactive map in Wahili directing people where to find what. They go deeper, moving between shelves until they reach the center, where the room finally opens slightly into a circular area full of tables and computers.

“This is one of our history libraries,” N’Jobu says, reaching out a hand and running it over the closest shelf.

“One of?” Sam asks, trying to look everywhere at once.

“This is where we house the modern history texts,” N’Jobu. “Well, late modern, I suppose is more accurate. These date to right before The Scramble and beyond, for the most part.”

“Uh,” says Sam.

“Every year, I ask my most promising students to continue their education with me. I am told it would be the equivalent of graduate work, in the United States. A masters or Ph.d?”

“Uh,” says Sam.

N’Jobu talks for awhile, about what he expects from his graduate students, what the work looks like, what his students are able to do by the end of the program. He dangles access to this and the other history libraries, like a particularly juicy carrot, and it all sounds a little too good to be true to Sam. N’Jobu says he’s been looking for students from outside Wakanda, to bring in  for their unique perspectives. He’s looking to bring fresh historical debate to a department he describes as “stodgy” and “of one mind” and “everyone agreeing with everyone far too often.”

When he stops talking, Sam wants to say something like,  _ “Thank you for the opportunity,” _ but instead he blurts out, “Are you only offering me this because the prince is my boyfriend?”

Sam blushes the moment the words slip out of his mouth, and he shuffles his feet, trying not to wither under N’Jobu’s blank stare.

N’Jobu takes his time replying, making Sam feel like a particularly foolish little kid.

“Would you be Prince T’Challa’s boyfriend if you weren’t smart and capable enough for me to offer this to you?” he asks.

“What?” That was nothing even close to anything Sam thought N’Jobu would say.

“Would you be Prince T’Challa’s interested in you, if you were smart and capable?”

It takes Sam a few more seconds, but eventually he gets it. 

“Huh,” says Sam, blinking. “Well, when you put it like that.”

“They are linked things.” N’Jobu grasps his hands behind his back, striding around between desks and computers. “I am sure the qualities that will make you a good apprentice are also the ones the prince admires in you. Take the position or not, but do not let something as foolish has wondering if you earned it influence your decision.”

This still feels too good to be true, so Sam’s got to flesh out all the reasons why it won’t work, just so N’Jobu can convince him that it will.

“I’ve got another year at GW before I graduate,” Sam says.

“And graduating is necessary?” N’Jobu stops pacing to frown at Sam some more.

“Uh,” says Sam.

“Your writing and your research abilities are beyond what I require. Why bother with the last year if you do not need it?”

Sam stifles a laugh, because to N’Jobu, there is no reason to continue at GW if Sam’s learned all he needs to. To N’Jobu, its paper. 

“Well, I still want the degree.”

“Hmm, well if you insist. The position will be available for you in two years time, also.”

Sam glances around the endless stacks of history books, tantalizingly close to something he could have, something he could sink his teeth into. He could live in this library happily. One word to N’Jobu, and it all could be his.

“Thanks, sir. I really appreciate it.” Sam takes a deep breath.  “But can I think on it?”

“As you wish. Take all the time you require.”

* * *

 

On the first weekend after the rains stop, when Sam’s not too swamped with school and Challa has no meetings or other such princely duties scheduled, they go back to Birnin Zana. In the morning, they hike in the caldera and when Sam’s knee gets tired, Challa drives them up a narrow path on another, around towering boulders and up steep climbs. 

They stand on the summit for long minutes, looking out over the whole rim to the mountains, the green rolling plains below them, spotted with blue lakes, and the dense jungles beyond. It’s breathtaking. It’s stunning.

“Wow, Simba,” Sam says, nudging Challa in the side when he’s had enough of the awestruck staring. “All this is going to be yours one day.”

A few beats pass in silence, and then Challa says, “Sam, was that a Lion King joke?”

“Uh.” Sam hesitates, worried that he’s finally stumbled upon a cultural taboo so offensive that Challa will never want anything to do with him again.

But then Challa bursts out laughing, the sounds echoing on the craggy rocks around them, down through the valley below. Even through his giggles, Challa gets both arms around Sam’s neck, hugging him tight. He presses a kiss to Sam’s mouth and Sam can feel him smile against his lips.

“You delight me,” Challa whispers. “You know that?”

“Well.” Sam clears his throat, suddenly so aware of Challa, every beautiful, lean inch of him pressed into Sam, from knees to chest. “I try.”

Challa laughs again and then drags Sam back towards the ATV. “Come, Sam. I’ve got big plans for the rest of our afternoon.”

* * *

 

The big plans turn out to be pretty simple. 

Challa locks them away in his rooms, with promises that no one will call him away for one princely thing or another. He even makes Sam swear a solemn oath to do no school work at all, until tomorrow at the earliest. 

There’s dinner in the fridge waiting for them, and breakfast too. They’ve got nowhere to be in the morning, and Sam doesn’t think he’s had this many consecutive hours of Challa to himself since DC.

They fuck, and laugh, and talk. They watch crappy American TV on Sam’s laptop and bicker about history. Challa does a serious dramatic reading from the journal of the first man in Challa’s family to come to power as king, five hundred years ago, and then wonders what that first king would think of the country now. Sam shows Challa the most recent picture Sarah sent of the girls, including Jody’s dresser, the surface of which is now covered in bars of soap, carved with toothpicks to look like various animals. The dragon is what makes Challa hum thoughtfully and say, “She’s good enough to graduate to wood, you know.”

Sam murmurs his I love yous into Challa’s collarbones. Challa says his own, lips moving hot against Sam’s throat.

Sam still has to get up every few hours to go stare in awe at Mansa Musa’s gold on the bookshelf, but other than that, Challa’s bed becomes his whole world. 

With the sun setting, and Challa breathing deep and steady on Sam’s chest, Sam says, “Hey, we had this whole day, just for us.”

“Hmm.” Challa shifts a little, getting comfortable and not quite asleep yet. “Yes, that was the goal. Well done us.”

“You think we’ll still get days like this? When I move here for real? When you’re doing more prince things and I’m living in the history library?”

Challa hums again, his fingertips idly circling Sam’s belly button. “I’ll always make time for you.”

Sam nods, waiting patiently for Challa’s sleepy brain to really get what Sam’s saying. It doesn’t take long.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Challa sits up abruptly, fighting with the sheets that get wrapped around his legs as he attempts to cross them and totally disturbing the cozy little moment Sam was trying to have. “You said  _ when _ . Not  _ if _ . Usually you say if. Did you misspeak?” 

Sam shakes his head.

“Does that mean?” Challa trails off, like he’s daring to hope but actually saying the words would prove too painful if they turned out not to be true. He’s fiddling with the edge of the sheet, tugging at a lose thread.

Sam sits up next to him, having a much easier time with the sheets even if his knee protests the change in position. He settles back against the headboard and takes Challa’s hands before he completely unraveles the bedding.

“I’m going to finish my degree at GW,” Sam says. 

Challa frowns at him. “Of course you are. Was that ever a question?”

“And then I’m going to take N’Jobu’s offer,” Sam continues. “So that means I’ll be pretty busy. Not prince busy, but close enough.”

“Sam,” Challa whispers, his voice ragged and breathy. He squeezes Sam’s hands, looking misty-eyed enough to make Sam misty-eyed too. 

Staring down at his lap, Sam clears his throat and presses on. “And I’m not saying I can, like, commit to live the rest of my life here or that I think we’re ready to go off and get married, but I’ll come back after I graduate. We’ll see how it goes.”

“It’s going to go  _ great _ ,” Challa says with conviction. He sounds like he is capable of making the world exactly the way he wants it, like nothing on heaven or earth will stop him from ensuring that Sam gets the kind of life he wants.

And Sam believes him.

“I love you,” Sam says as Challa settles into his side. “And I want about a million more days like this.”

“Yes,” says Challa. “Yes.”


	4. Year Four

On Sam’s last first day of school at GW, he makes it to class ten minutes early, even though his pace is leisurely and he takes the scenic route. He’s not the first person here. A dude with a mop of brown hair is sleeping with his head down on a desk in the second row.

The classroom is different, and Sam isn’t a squirrely, nervous freshmen with no social life and scars too recently healed over, but the scene is so familiar that Sam actually lets out a laugh.

From the second row, Bucky raises his head and blinks.

“Well if it isn’t Fancy Metal Arm,” Sam says, navigating around desks as he comes into the classroom.

“Cheekbones,” Bucky replies, grinning. 

When Sam gets close enough, Bucky kicks out the chair at the desk next to his and Sam dumps his backpack on it as he takes a seat.

Bucky’s presence in this class isn’t a surprise. They coordinated their schedules via Skype when Sam was still in Wakanda and they both realized they needed a required upper division writing credit. Bucky’d been putting it off because he hates writing, while Sam put it off because he thought he’d be bored, seeing as he spends 90% of his life figuring out the most eloquent and effective way to backup whatever argument he’s making on a plethora of historical subjects.

“How was your 8AM?” Sam asks, unable to contain his smirk.

Bucky groans and lets his head drop back down to his arms crossed over the top of his desk.

“I don’t get why you keep doing this to yourself, man,” Sam says, shaking his head.

“I wake up when Steve goes for his run every morning, anyway,” Bucky grumbles. “I always figure, if I am going to be awake, I might as well just get my ass out of bed and get my day started. And then it always sucks more than I remember.”

“That’s real dumb, Barnes.”

Bucky grunts and lifts his head to glare at Sam. “Honestly? When I take 8AMs, it usually means that I’m out of class early enough that I can get all my work done before Steve gets home from work.”

“Ah,” says Sam, nodding. “I shoulda known this was a Steve thing. That’s a much better reason.”

“Well, I’m so fucking glad you approve.”

“Hey, I get it! I stay up way later than I used to so I can Skype with T’Challa. I totally get it.”

Appeased, Bucky settles back down on his arms. He only gets another minute of peace before the class around them starts to fill up. Unlike the last class they had together, there is not a freshman in sight, and everyone coming in is relatively low on energy, even if it’s the first day of class.

The professor bops in, passes out the syllabus, and bops right out again, all in less than five minutes.

“I fucking love the first day of class,” Bucky says, standing up and stretching his arms high above his head. As is traditional for the first day of school, he’s in a tank top, and a few people near him try really hard not to stare. “I need a nap.”

“America’s hanging out on U Yard,” Sam says. “But I want coffee first.”

Bucky shoulders his backpack and nods. “Lead on, sergeant.”

* * *

“Alright, come on, squish together.” America’s leaning back into Sam, tugging on the fancy metal arm to get Bucky to move closer on her other side.

“Is this really necessary?” Bucky asks, even as he lets America arrange him to her liking.

“It’s out last first day of school,” America says, handing him her phone. “Here, put those long ass arms to good use.”

Muttering under his breath, Bucky at least manages a smile for the camera, snapping a couple pictures of the three of them before handing the phone back for America’s inspection.

“Oh yeah,” she says, nodding her approval as Sam and Bucky both move away from her until they’re sitting in a loose circle, Bucky laying out flat on his back and Sam getting his knee comfortable, stretched out in front of him. “Totally Insta-worthy. I have a selfie from my first day of class freshman year, too. It’s with my roommate. We were inseparable for those first few weeks and then she rushed a sorority and started going on these rants against Black Lives Matter. I wonder if she even graduated.”

“Wow,” says Bucky. “I’ve never been more thankful to not have done the whole dorm living thing.”

“Yeah, being in gay love off campus is much better,” America says, typing away on her phone. When she looks up from the screen there are actual tears in her eyes. 

Sam and Bucky share a wary look.

“You okay?” Sam asks, clutching his coffee.

“Yeah, yeah,” America says, wiping her eyes. “It just sort of hit me that this is it. After this year, college is over. And yeah, you two are probably bound for grad school, but it won’t be the same. And I know in a couple weeks when I’m drowning in work, I’ll be counting down the days till graduation, but I’m going to miss this. Miss you guys.”

“America, you sap,” Bucky says, but he’s smiling softly.

“It’s going to be weird,” Sam says. He’s both counting down the days till graduation, when he can go back to T’Challa and start his life in Wakanda, and dreading it. This college and these people helped him figure out who he wanted to be, after too many years following orders, and he’ll miss it.

“We’re just gonna have to have the senior best year ever,” America decides.

Bucky snorts. “If you think that means you’ll have a better chance of getting us to go out dancing, I’ve got news for you, kid.”

America rolls her eyes and collapses back into the grass, settling down with both her arms behind her head. “This is nice. I missed this.”

“Me too,” Sam agrees. He’s only been back in the country for a month, after he spent most of the summer travelling with T’Challa, and he’s not quite used to the United States yet, where everything feels faster and just  _ more _ , the hum of the city too loud, the choices in the grocery store for something as simple as bread too numerous. He’s spend most of his time avoiding public places, cooking at his ma’s or playing video games with the Barnes-Rogerses in their dumpy apartment.

This is his first real venture out into the world since he got back, and it is nice. Sam did miss it. 

“Senior year,” America murmurs. “Best year yet. Let’s do this.”

Sam laughs, closes his eyes, and tilts his face up towards the sun.

* * *

“Why are you awake so late?” T’Challa asks the moment the camera connects on their Skype call.

“Hello to you, too.” Sam chuckles and burrows deeper into his pillow. He’s on his side in bed, the room dark around him, and he knows this angle can’t be particularly flattering but he’s tired and just wants to hear Challa’s voice before he passes out. Then he’s gotta get up and take a test in the morning, in - fuck - five hours..

“Yes, yes,” says Challa. He’s bustling around his bedroom in Birnin Zana, the bright morning light streaming in through the window and painting everything gold. The lighting is doing wonders for Challa’s already gorgeous face when Sam can catch a glimpse of him, making his skin glow, his cheekbones higher and his eyes brighter. “Hello. I love you. I miss you. Why are you awake so late?”

Sam giggles some more. He’s well into slaphappy territory, from too much studying, not enough sleep, and ingesting mostly caffeine over the last few days. Watching Challa does nothing to make Sam  _ less _ giddy, but trying to keep his eyes on Challa as he bustles around his room, getting ready for the day, is making Sam’s head spin.

“Will you stay still for second?” Sam asks. “Let me see you, babe.”

Challa pauses as he’s clipping bracelets around his wrists at his dresser on the very edge of Sam’s screen. He’s taking a more active role in the day to day responsibilities of ruling now, more out in the public eye than he was before his year in DC, and he’s more careful with his appearance as a result. The standard black wardrobe is now adorned with metal jewelry and bright, patterned scarves tied around his shoulders.

Sam always thought he carried himself like a royal - a little haughty and a little spoiled sometimes, although always elegant about it - but he’s more confident now, like being a leader is not a costume he steps into when he has to anymore, rather just who he is.

Since Sam went back to DC, Challa’s even gotten better at waking up early. Evening for Sam is morning for Challa, so he’s gotten used to braving the world before noon in order to Skype with Sam on a regular basis. His new ability to function in the morning might not be a direct result of his expanded princely duties, but it sure helps.

The new, more obvious markers of royalty are a good look on him, but when Challa takes a seat in front of his laptop, graceful as always, he’s wearing that shy little smile, the one Sam’s been utterly taken by since Challa first gave it to him in Wheatley's class, asking if he could sit next to Sam, as if there was ever a change of Sam saying no.

“There you are,” Sam murmurs. It’s easier to keep his eyes open now that he’s looking right at Challa. “Hi, Lala.”

Challa huffs and rolls his eyes at the nickname, but he’s still smiling. “Kasuku mdogo,” he replied, using his own nickname for Sam. Challa claims it means lovebird, but Shuri insists it means annoying parrot, so Sam figures it’s somewhere in the middle, both loving and teasing. “As much as I enjoy hearing your voice at the start of my day, I must say that you look horrible.”

“Can you even see me? I don’t have any lights on.”

“I don’t need to see you to know this.”

Sam giggles and Challa purses his lips, raises an eyebrow. 

“What was that noise?” he demands. “Was that supposed to be a laugh? Was it coming from you?”

Sam giggles some more and T’Challa looks genuinely concerned now. Granted, that’s not Sam’s normal laugh. It’s his so tired he’s basically high laugh and admittedly, it’s not great.

“I’m just really tired,” Sam confesses.

“Yet you insisted on a call with me, despite the time there,” T’Challa says, mouth tight with disapproval.

“I sleep better after I talk to you,” Sam murmurs. “Just a couple minutes.”

“Finals were not like this for you when I was there.” Challa reaches out a hand, like he’s trying to stroke Sam’s cheek through the screen. It’s what he’d be doing if he was in bed next to Sam.

“I wasn’t ass deep in my thesis a couple years ago.”

“I do not like it.”

“It’s fine.” 

“You are taking care of yourself?”

Sam understands that T’Challa’s really asking, “ _ Is the stress from finals sending you into a downward depressive spiral of anxiety and panic?” _

School has made his PTSD flare up in the past, a super fun combination of panic attacks, nightmares, and a general inability to even get out of bed for a week after finals were done. Challa wasn’t around for that at the end of his freshman year, but Sam told him about it last summer, when Sam decided to stayed in Wakanda for a few extra months.

“Yeah, babe. I’m okay. I promise. No dreams or panic attacks and I’m giving myself a day to sleep after my last final but then I’ve got a therapist appointment. I’ll be okay.”

Challa still looks far from thrilled, but he nods anyway.

“Just two more tests and I’m done,” Sam continues, pulling his blankets up to his chin. “Four days and I’ve got a month off. And then in seven days I’ll be picking up this guy I kinda like from the airport and taking him home to Harlem to meet my whole family.”

Sam would’ve gotten a real kick out of T’Challa stoically and silently suffering through the indignity of sleeping on an air mattress in his aunt’s living room, but they get so little time in the same damn country that Sam has no plans on spending a single night somewhere that he can’t get his mouth on every inch of Challa’s skin. They’ll be hanging out with Sam’s extended family during the day, probably spending more time than Sam would prefer at Rockefeller Center to see the tree, and retreating back to a hotel at night.

“I’ve already met your family,” Challa reminds him, even though Sam’s ma and Sarah are a lot more manageable than Sam’s nine million aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom are very nosy about this whole Sam’s-dating-an-actual-African-prince business. If Sam was bringing home some average dude, they probably would’ve made a much bigger deal about the dating a man part of the equation. But Sam being with a man is not nearly as unbelievable or gossip-worthy as T’Challa’s future as the king of Wakanda.

Sam is probably going to spend a good chunk of his Christmas break very embarrassed. 

“Sarah and I currently exchange three and a half emails a week on average,” Challa continues.

“Really?” Sam’s eyelids are getting heavy, curiosity and Challa’s face not enough to keep him awake. “What do you talk about?”

“The romance and mystery of outer space. Electronic engineering. Jamie’s pitching arm and Jody’s latest obsession.”

“What is it that Sarah’s always saying?” Sam’s words are all slurred together. “Jamie likes sports and Jody likes everything else?”

Challa laughs. “It’s true. She’ll grow to be one of those rare people who’s an expert in many things.”

“What else do you talk about with my sister?”

“I fill her in on the trials and tribulations of Shuri’s latest inventions,” Challa continues. His voice is deep, quiet, like a lullaby even if he’s not singing. “Sometimes I complain about the more tedious social engagements I am forced to attend. I tell her about how much I miss this guy I kind of like.”

Sam manages a smile but can’t open his eyes. “Sounds nice.”

“Sleep, my love. And dream well. I will see you soon.”

Sam’s not sure if he actually manages to say his own part of the goodbye before he falls asleep.

* * *

Jamie dumps out the dominos on the kitchen table and takes the job of turning all the tiles face down very seriously. Next to her, Jody’s got Bucky’s metal hand in her lap. She’s studying his fingers with a look of deep concentration on her little face, Bucky holding perfectly still and letting her move his hand at will. Every once and awhile, he’ll twitch, making Jody jump in surprise and giggle.

The Barnes-Rogers came with Sam to Ma’s house for Spring Break. This year, the girls break falls on the same week as GW’s, but UVA isn’t off for another two weeks, so Ma wasn’t able to watch the girls like she normally would. Sam was happily dragooned into babysitting, well aware that this time next year, it going to take a massive plane ride to see his nieces.

“What game are we playing?” Steve asks, settling into the seat next to Bucky. 

“Double Twelves?” Jamie asks and everyone nods their agreement.

Jamie dominates the first few rounds, which is why no one should ever let her pick the game, but no one gets overly competitive. Sometimes, Jamie and Jody start yelling at each other, and the game ends in tears, but maybe the girls are growing up, because they are both more capable of laughing off their loses than they were before Sam left for Wakanda.

Halfway through the game, Sam’s phone starts vibrating in his pocket. He’s surprised to see so many texts from Challa, and he counts out the time difference. It’s dinner time in Wakanda, hours earlier than Sam usually hears from him.

The first text is a series of increasingly distressed emojis. The next says,  _ Free to talk???  _ As Sam’s trying to decode the emojis, another comes in that says,  _ Nevermind I am fine,  _ followed shortly after by a fourth _. Totally and completely fine.  _

“Hey, let’s take a break,” Sam says as Jody and Jamie are shuffling the tiles for the next round.

“Why?” Jamie asks. “Is it your  _ boyfriend _ ?”

“Does he want you to  _ kiss _ him?” Jody asks.

The girls starts making obnoxious kissy noises, and Sam rolls his eyes as he gets up from the table. “Yeah, yeah, cool it,” Sam tells them.

That just makes them more committed to the kissy noises, and as Sam retreats upstairs, both Steve and Bucky join in the racket. Sam still smiling about it, amused despite himself, when he connects a video call with Challa a few minutes later.

Challa’s whole face takes up Sam’s screen, and he’s wide eyed, gnawing away on his thumb nail.

“Hey, babe,” Sam says, trying to keep his concern out of his voice. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, fine,” Challa says. “I’m fine. Everything is  _ fine _ . Great, even.”

“Huh.” Sam’s genuinely baffled. Challa actually did seem fine when Sam talked to him last night, but something has obviously changed. “You had a meeting with you dad today, right?”

“Yes.”

Sam waits a few beats, but Challa does not elaborate.

“So how did that meeting go?”

“Fine,” Challa says and Sam wonders if his ma was this irritated, when Sam was fresh out of the Air Force and in pretty deep denial about his mental state, claiming to be fine over and over again. 

“Well, that’s good. What did you talk about?”

Frowning, T’Challa turns his head to look out a nearby window. Sam can tell by the glass wall at his back that he’s in Jabari. He must have retreated there immediately after meeting with his father. He was in Birnin Zana when Sam spoke to him last night.

“Do you remember me telling you of my father’s yearly address to the African Union?” Challa asks.

“Yeah,” Sam replies. “You’re going to Addis Ababa for that next month, right?”

“Correct. Only it will not be my father giving the address, but me.”

“Damn,” says Sam. An impending speech to the whole assembly of the AU is a good reason to freak out. 

“He thinks I am ready.” Challa scoffs, and then he’s up and pacing, raving about how ridiculous it is to think that anyone will want to hear a word of what he has to say. 

Feeling useless, and too far away, Sam makes soothing sounds at his computer until Challa wears himself out, collapsing back in his desk chair, once more in front of his own computer.

“Challa, when you talk, people listen,” Sam says. 

“Well, they have too. It’s only polite.”

Sam laughs and shakes his head. “That’s not what it is at all. You’re the most charismatic person I know, and when you speak, people pay attention because you are so damn compelling. When you’re talking to one person or a whole classroom, you make people feel like you are speaking right to them, without even trying.”

“Oh.” Challa cocks his head to the side and squints at Sam. “I do?”

“You do,” Sam assures him. “Giving a speech to the AU, it’s just what you do all the time, but bigger. I know it’s got to be scary and stressful, but you are so capable. You’ve got this.”

T’Challa takes a deep breath. “I’ve got this.”

“You absolutely do.”

“I wish you were here,” he whispers, leaning closer to the camera. “This would seem less dire, if you were here.”

“Next year, Lala. Next year.”

* * *

The end of the semester is a blur. 

Finals are the usual horror show, but jumping right from that to the graduation festivities is particularly bizarre, leaving Sam exhausted and elated and still a little disbelieving that it’s really over.

This degree has been a long time coming. 

T’Challa flies in for graduation and no matter how much Sam says that he’ll have no problem studying for finals if Challa comes in early, he still refuses to arrive before Sam’s last test is done. 

Sam knew Okoye and Ayo would accompany T’Challa on the trip, but Shuri is a surprise. Despite the way she still subtly threatens to cause him a great deal of pain via email on occasion, she seems thrilled for him, offering him smiles and hugs and numerous congratulations on graduating.

The ceremony is fine. There is a tag on the back of his robe rubbing his skin raw and the whole get up is too hot and he’s too distracted to really pay attention to the speaker, but the whole thing becomes worth it when he finds his family afterwards. 

Sam’s not sure if he’s ever seen his ma cry so much and smile so wide. 

They take pictures, way more than Sam finds necessary and with every possible combination of people. Someone decides to snap a couple extra of Sam with Challa, which is nice. Sam pretends they are not mid photo shoot, just stands there with his arm around Challa for a few peaceful moments, while Challa makes his negative opinion of American graduation attire well known.

Pictures of just him and Ma are saved for last, supposedly to give her time to recover from her crying jag, but she just starts up all over again as she comes to stand under a tree next to Sam. She smooths out a wrinkle in his robe, smiles up at him with wet eyes, and says, “I’m so proud of you, baby.”

There isn’t a single picture of just Sam and his ma on graduation day, without the both of them crying.

* * *

Much to Sam’s dismay, Challa rents out the gay bar where they first met for a graduation party. Apparently, there were months of him scheming with Sam’s ma, Steve, and America’s parents to organize the event as a surprise. Sam’s thankful they made it a group party, because with most of his family in New York he just does not know enough people to justify renting out an entire bar. Bucky knows even less people. They’re lucky America is friends with everyone on campus, or it would be a pretty lame party, in all honesty. 

Sam lets Jamie and Jody take turns pulling him out on the dance floor, delighting in their laughter as he takes every opportunity to dip them so low that their hair nearly grazes the floor. 

It’s a lot of accepting congratulations - from people he knows, from people he sort of knows, from people related to America or people America introduced him two once - and although he might do far better with crowds these days, T’Challa still manages to pull him away right before he gets too overwhelmed.

They use that back hall where they first met to make out, probably a little more often than is appropriate for a party with so many kids.

“So you like cats,” Sam says, laughing against Challa’s mouth. “Who knew a line like that would work?”

“You’re lucky you’re so handsome,” Challa replies.

* * *

“Sam,” Challa whispers in the middle of the night. He sounds like he’s been up for awhile, which is a shame, because Sam’s been pretending to be asleep for at least three hours. Apparently he’s been doing a terrible job, even if he’s kept the tossing and turning to a minimum.

“Sorry.” Sam groans out the apology and finally gives in to the urge to kick out his legs. “Fuck, sorry.”

“Do not apologize,” Challa murmurs. “I cannot sleep, either. Shut your eyes.”

Sam does as he’s told, the mattress dipping beneath him as Challa sits up and turns on the bedside light. 

Blinking so his eyes will adjust, it takes him a few seconds to get a good look at Challa where he’s sitting, legs drawn up to his chest.

“You okay?” Sam asks, reaching out to squeeze Challa’s ankle.

“Is it strange to say I am going to miss this place?” he asks, gesturing around the nearly empty room. All Sam’s stuff is either packed away, ready to make the journey across the Atlantic, or in storage at his ma’s house for safekeeping. 

Sam lived in this room for three years, and even though most of his personal possessions are books, the space looks strange without his things in it. 

“No,” Sam replies. “It’s not weird. You pretty much lived here, too.”

“I suppose,” says T’Challa. “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep anytime soon?”

“What, the night before a big international flight as I move to the otherside of the world?” Sam asks, shaking his head. “Of course not.”

T’Challa nods and then gets out of bed. He pulls a shirt on over his head and starts rummaging around, looking for his shoes amongst their packed baggage, ready for the flight in the morning. 

Sam looks at the time on his phone. In six hours his ma will be here, along with Sarah and the girls, to take them out for one last breakfast. The whole lot of them are planning on taking them to the airport for a very public and very painful goodbye, even though the production is going to require multiple cars. It’s only going to be a couple months until he sees them again - his whole family plans on spending the last month of the summer before the girls and ma are back at school in Wakanda - but Sam is going to be a mess.

With or without any sleep tonight, it’ll hurt, so Sam figures he might as well follow T’Challa, wherever he’s planning to go. That usually works out well for Sam.

Challa steals the hoodie Sam’s planning on wearing on the plane tomorrow so Sam steals his sweater. They slip out of the apartment silently, careful not to wake the Barnes-Rogerses, and Sam takes Challa’s hand when they get down on the street outside. 

By mutual, silent agreement, they walk towards campus. They take their time, Sam well aware that he will not be walking this well worn route again. In the mad rush of packing and planning and coordinating breakfast with his whole family plus the Wakandans plus Steve and Bucky, Sam didn’t give himself a moment for a proper goodbye to his life at GW. This walk is exactly what he was missing, as he was laying in bed next to T’Challa, unable to sleep.

When they get onto campus, they walk toward Gelmen and then by Phillips Hall, all these places where Sam relearned how to be a person after years in the service, fully realized his potential to obsess over history, and found people who love him. 

They pass the lawn where Challa made his first snow angel and Challa smiles at Sam, soft and dreamy, before they eventually settle on a bench under the glow of a street lamp.

“It wasn’t a bad four years,” Sam muses, breaking the silence for the first time since they left the apartment.

“Ah,” says Challa, chuckling. “Stunning praise.”

Sam settles in next to T’Challa, elbowing his arm until he gets the message, obediently lifting it and draping it over Sam’s shoulder. 

“Okay,” Sam admits. “I really adored it. It was exactly what I needed.”

“Yes, that’s better,” Challa agrees. “I really adored it, too. Although that was mostly down to you. You could stay, you know. They do have grad programs that do not require you to leave your whole family behind.”

After graduation they spent a few weeks at Ma’s place, and since, T’Challa’s been a little less enthusiastic about the move. It’s like he suddenly realized that Sam’s no longer going to be a car ride away from his family, and he’s wracked with guilt over the whole thing. This isn’t a new revelation for Sam. The thought of moving so far from his ma, the girls, and Sarah is what kept Sam from agreeing to move to Wakanda immediately, the second T’Challa told him that he’d decided about their future a year before Sam figured it out.

“You’re my family, too,” Sam reminds him, squeezing his knee.

“I am, aren’t I?” When T’Challa smiles, he does it with his whole body, every inch of him radiating joy, and it will always leave Sam feeling breathless. “So you haven’t changed your mind, then?”

“Nope, I’m in.”

“What is that ridiculous idiom? The one with the shoes dropping in temperature?”

It takes Sam a minute to parse that out. “Cold feet?”

“Cold feet!” T’Challa’s voice carries throughout the deserted campus. It’s a good thing the dorms are empty for summer. “That’s it. You don’t have the cold feet?”

“Wool socks, my man. My feet are down right toasty.”

“I owe these sock my thanks, seeing as they’re apparently responsible for you coming to my country.”

They sit for a long time, until Challa is yawning every few seconds and Sam feels like he could pass out, right here on this bench with his head on Challa’s shoulder.

Shaking the sleep out of his limbs, Sam stands up and does a slow rotation in a circle, taking in every tree and ivy-covered building, committing to memory every good thing that happened to him here. When he gets back to where he started, there’s a prince staring up at him, sleepy and smiling and everything Sam’s ever wanted.

“You ready?” Sam asks.

T’Challa answers with a nod and a yawn,

“Come on,” Sam says, grabbing T’challa’s hand and tugging him to his feet. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic could have be titled The Author Both Misses and has Fully Romanticized the College Experience. Or See How Many Historical References Local Woman Manages to Cram into Romance Fanfic.
> 
> Speaking of historical references, here is a list of some things I did not make up:  
> [Elmina Castle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmina_Castle)  
> [The Scramble for Africa.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa)  
> [Great Zimbabwe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe)  
> [Mansa Musa and all that gold he gave out all over the place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali)
> 
> Things I did make up:  
> Wahili is not a real language. Given where I put Wakanda in this fic, it made sense for them to speak Swahili, and after trying to cleverly combined the phrase Wakandan Swahili into one word, I just ended up dropping the W. (FYI Xhosa, the language they speak in the movies, is unique to South Africa so I am not totally sure why they chose it?? Ah, well.)
> 
> If anyone wants to come obsess about history with me, you can find me at [Tumblr!](https://jaxington.tumblr.com)


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